No Titles
by Jebe
Summary: Ranma/Vandread crossover with elements of VOTOMS, as part of an attempt to explore the premise more. Ranma is a 2nd generation man of Tarak that has been assigned to the Ikazuchi. *Not a replacement of Hibiki Tokai*
1. Chapter 1

Prologue

[-]

"He's coming around."

Ranma opened his eyes to glaring lights in a white room. He noticed hums and beeps, and moving his head slightly confirmed that he was hooked up to a variety of medical equipment. A second later he realized that there was an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

"Lieutenant Commander Saotome, if you can understand me I want you to lift your left hand." A voice asked.

Ranma lifted his left hand despite the fatigue and stiffness.

"Thank you Lieutenant Commander Saotome. Your microbot levels are running very low, so this is going to take a little longer then it usually does, but everything is looking good. You can rest now."

Ranma drew a breath with a lot more effort then it should have taken. He remembered when this took less then a day.

[-]

"How long was I out?"

"Three days." The intelligence officer was clipped and professional. His dark hair was cut short, and his white uniform was pristine. His presence meant they hadn't defrosted him for a battle. "You're still doing better then the current average. It normally takes a week to bring someone fully out of cyrostasis these days."

"How long was I in cryo?" Ranma clarified.

"Around a year. According to the doctors you're physically somewhere in your early twenties at this point. The nature of cyrostasis means it's not that easy to nail down an exact age equivalent. Chronologically you're..."

Ranma cut him off. "I don't need to know how long it has been since I was produced. What's the mission? Is this going to be an infiltration op?"

"I'm afraid not. The Ikazuchi will launch in a month, and High Command decided to pick you to train the Vanguard squadron."

"Don't you mean squadrons?" Ranma asked stressing the plural. He knew enough about the Ikazuchi to know it wasn't a light carrier.

"I'm afraid not. Production of the new Tsukumo types has been lagging as materials have been redirected to making the final push to get the Ikazuchi ready. It's all we can do to provide you 18 Tsukumo types while trying to maintain the front lines and get the Ikazuchi ready."

"Why is the Ikazuchi so important?"

"It should allow us to regain space superiority over Tarak." The intelligence officer responded calmly.

Ranma stared at him for a long moment. He remembered that they'd been moving things underground due to not being able to insure space superiority. Had that changed when he was out? When had he heard about that? He decided to shelve it, he had a job to do and there wasn't anytime to worry about the effects of cryofragmentation. "How many candidates?"

"Fifty."

[-]

Ranma looked over the roster, and at the platoon that standing in a column five wide and ten deep in front of him. They were all academy graduates, and there wasn't a single pet among them. He'd met a few pets who could hold their own, but he was satisfied with this. These men had been produced to serve the military, and the fact they were here meant they'd shown some aptitude to be able to handle a Vanguard.

He flipped over to the training schedule looking it over again. He didn't see why they were having him do this.

[-]

Cadet Ikari covertly glanced over at Lieutenant Command Saotome. They'd been directed into a small movie theater that had thankfully had air conditioning. The Lieutenant Commander was just calmly standing at parade rest near the door with a look of disinterest, even though all of them had been allowed to be seated in the relatively comfortable seats.

The projector started up and started playing a film introducing them to the new Tsukumo type Vanguard. It looked awesome, and yet it almost looked like the Lieutenant Commander was glaring.

[-]

"You're looking down." Meia looked up from her tablet, and noted that Gascogne was standing near her.

"We've lost a lot of good pilots." Meia noted.

Gascogne shrugged and sat down across from her. "The good times are over, Meia. Mejere has revoked everyone's letters of marque, and has began cracking down on us. Even if the paydays weren't drying up, we'd be losing people that don't want to be branded outlaws. At this point most of those who are staying are people who have nowhere else to go."

"I understand, but that leaves us in a bad position. We've got a lot of rookies."

"Like Dita?" Gascogne prompted, referencing the now infamous UFO girl that had almost crashed her Dread.

"She's not the only one having problems, and even with them the Shimakaze will only be able to use 15 Dreads. Despite that, Magno's insisting that we leave the Paraiso behind."

"Someone has to protect the base in case the Mejere military comes sniffing around. The Paraiso is better suited to defense, and the Shimakaze should be adequate."

Meia looked back at the flight roster. Somehow she'd just have to make do.

[-]

"Today we are going to learn about the fine art of requisitioning supplies." Lieutenant Commander Saotome stated as he took up position in front of their column. "The nearby defense base has graciously decided to allow us to acquire their Tsukumo type simulators to further your training."

Something about the way the Lieutenant Commander said that made Cadet Tenkawa feel that what they were about to do wasn't technically legal.

[-]

Asuma sat in the guard hut feeling completely and utterly bored. No one ever came here on his shift. He couldn't wait for his shift to be over so he could go and do something else. Asuma blinked and stared as he saw a dust cloud approaching created by a pair of large covered troop transport trucks.

The lead truck parked itself next to his guard hut as he got out and approached it. He recognized the driver from the news, he was supposed to be some kind of ace who was training Vanguard pilots for the Ikazuchi.

"Hey there, I'm Lieutenant Commander Saotome and I'm here to show my cadets your Tsukumo types, given ours haven't been delivered yet." The driver stated over his ID and paperwork. Something about the way the man with the dark ponytail was grinning put him on edge but everything checked out.

He decided to just go ahead and wave them through instead of having the base commander chew him out for wasting his time.

[-]

"Lieutenant Commander, should we be doing this?" Cadet Amada asked, as they began unbolting the simulators from the floor.

"Don't worry Cadet, they'll be getting them back. We just need them more now." Came the response.

"When you put it that way Lieutenant Commander, why shouldn't we?" Cadet Nagare noted with enthusiasm.

"Afterall they'll get it back, eventually." Cadet Maki added suggestively while covering his mouth.

[-]

Asuma caught a cold can of beer that had been thrown his way. He stated his thanks as the trucks left. It was a hot day today, and the guard hut didn't have air conditioning.

[-]

Lieutenant Commander Saotome oversaw the installation of the simulators into an abandoned hangar on their base. Cadet Nagare had caught on, and was currently working with a team to change out the air conditioning units that had broken down with functional ones from another hanger. In total they'd "requisitioned" four simulator units which were each designed to accommodate four pilots, and could be networked together. Cadet Akagi was feeling giddy he'd get a chance to pilot a Vanguard, even if it was in a simulator.

[-]

Cadet Subaru called out from his side of the simulator. "I shot you down again, Tenkawa."

"And I just shot you down." Cadet Maki commented from his simulator pod.

A heavy truck flatbed pulled up through the open hangar door. Lieutenant Commander Saotome and Cadet Shin jumped out as the truck came to a stop.

"Sir, is that a Vanguard?" Cadet Akagi asked.

Lieutenant Commander Saotome smiled tightly. "Its mine. Cadets Shin and Akagi why don't you remove this tarp for me?"

Several of the other cadets that were waiting their turn on the simulators rushed over, and helped untie the ropes holding the tarp down. A concerted tug later and a blood red shoulder was revealed that contrasted with the dark matte green paints that covered the rest of the unit. Another concerted tug pulled the tarp completely off the unit, and revealed it had a spherical head.

"That's a Scope Dog." Someone said in wonder.

"Lieutenant Commander Saotome, you're the Red Shoulder?" Cadet Akagi asked in disbelief.

"The last one at least." Lieutenant Commander Saotome responded coolly. A murmuring started.

[-]

"We've got the Red Shoulder on our side, there's no way we can lose." Cadet Nagare declared as he laid down in his bunk for the night. Cadet Reinard nodded in response.

"He's just one man." Cadet Amada objected from a nearby rack.

"His kill count says otherwise." Cadet Subaru noted looking between them before climbing into his bunk.

"They say that he's worth more than entire squadron on Vanguards." Cadet Ikari added.

"I heard that he bathes the shoulder of his Scope Dog in the blood of his victims, and he's a demon of battle that can't be killed." Cadet Maki added.

[-]

Meia looked over as Melno and Dita formed up on her wing. Jura had already come back from taking Deluna and Riquer out, and Barnette would head out with Aoi and Yuka once they got back. These new pilots were getting better, they at least looked like they were following them now instead of just flying in the same general area. It was a simple but necessary step in getting them comfortable with actually piloting a Dread, and paying attention to what was going on around them.

A holographic communications window appeared in her cockpit and Meia was greeted by the sight of the bubbly redhead the had almost rear ended her fighter yesterday. At least Dita was wearing her pilot suit like she'd ordered. The last thing she needed was to lose a pilot to a cockpit seal failure. "Hey Leader, do you think there are any aliens around here?" Dita asked hopefully.

"Dita, you need to focus on flying right now. We don't need a re-enactment of yesterday." Meia cautioned.

"But Leader, what if there's a UFO and I miss it?" Dita whined.

Meia opened up another communications channel. "Melno, if Dita starts drifting off course again I'm authorizing you to shoot her down."

"Understood." Her much calmer green haired trainee responded. "Am I authorized to use missiles?"

"No, that'd be a waste of ammo. Use guns."

"Understood." Melno acknowledged.

"Shoot me down?! Leader, you're not serious about that are you?" Meia closed the communications channel. That should keep Dita on her toes.

[-]

Meia opened her cockpit to find Dita standing on her wing. She was starting to regret sending the girl in first, to avoid the possibility of a repeat of what had happened yesterday.

"Leader, you're mean." Dita accused. "How could you joke about something like that?"

Meia unsealed her helmet and regarded Dita coolly. "It looked like you paid attention to following me today." She noted calmly.

Dita put her hands under her chin and tried to look cute. Meia suspected the girl had gotten far with that. "But Leader..."

"I want you to spend some time in the simulator while Barnette's group heads out." Meia ordered.

[-]

"Is Dita giving you problems?" Paraila asked, grinning in that crazy way of hers. Her currently former red headed wingmate asked.

"I had Melno shoot her down." Meia responded, with a sly smile.

Paraila started chuckling. "That's a good one. How'd Dita take it?"

"Let's just say Melno and her are having some quality with the simulators."

[-]

"Lieutenant Commander, I have a question." Cadet Akagi requested after they completed morning roll call.

"Shoot cadet." The Lieutenant Commander responded with calm disinterest.

"What's the most important part of being a pilot, sir?" It was obvious that Cadet Akagi had slipped up in his enthusiasm, and just remembered to add the obligatory sir at the last minute.

The Lieutenant Commander stared at Cadet Akagi for a long moment, and the cadet started to squirm. "The most important thing for you right now cadet is to learn how to operate a Tsukumo type." Turning to the formation the Lieutenant Commander looked them over.

"Cadets you've all had a chance to familiarize yourselves with the Tsukumo type's controls, and run through the basic dogfight programs. As a result today we're going to have a competition. You will fight simulated Dreads in lots, and the ten of you with the worst scores will be leaving today. Assignments will be on the screen as usual." The Lieutenant Commander paused for a moment but there was only silence in response. "You are dismissed."

[-]

The remaining cadets walked back to the barracks after a long day of working the rankings in the simulator. It had been a long but satisfying day of competition, and while those leaving hadn't made the cut the general attitude was that they'd succeed somewhere else. Cadet Nagare was currently the top ranked.

"How many do you think are going to be left in the end?" Cadet Tenkawa asked rhetorically.

"Only those with the fire in their hearts to protect Tarak will survive." Cadet Nagare responded.

"We'll just have to bury the rest." Cadet Maki added.

"If you can't make the cut, then maybe you should just save us all the trouble and drop out Tenkawa." Cadet Subaru shot in Tenkawa's direction.

"Hey I shot you down." Cadet Tenkawa objected.

"Once, because I was busy trying to fight with Nagare." Cadet Subaru shot back. That guy was insane.

[-]

Ranma calmly looked over the data. The results were adequate. The simulation speed was greatly reduced versus that in actual combat. He'd been tempted to just go ahead and let go of twenty today, so he could give more simulator time to the rest and really start weeding out those who couldn't actually make the cut. Then he'd reminded himself that they were still establishing basic skills like deflection shooting that they'd need to not be useless.

The way the current simulation they were using was setup all they needed to do was hit a Dread a couple of times and it'd go down. There was a time when the weapons available would do that, but now it was important to get precise deflection shots where the Dread shielding was weakest. Even without the greatly reduced speed it just wasn't an accurate simulation of actual battle conditions yet, and one of these current low performers might be one of the few to have things click on how to do good deflection shots.

The missiles he'd been able to get slated for his squadron would help, but if a Dread hadn't already taken some engine damage they would be able to evade the missiles currently in production.

[-]

Meia sat down at a table with Barnette and Jura. The two of them were doing their lovey dovey stuff with Barnette feeding Jura. Meia suspected that was the result of a request on Jura's part. She was way too pampered.

"How are things going with you two?" Meia asked as she sat down.

"Absolutely marvelous." Jura responded

"I meant with the cadets." Meia clarified.

"They're coming along. What about yours?" Barnette responded, while dabbing away a little excess sauce that had gotten onto Jura's cheek with a napkin.

"They're not bad." She responded simply.

[-]

The Lieutenant Commander looked over the now smaller formation after morning roll call. "Cadets, I feel it's important to clarify something. Your simulators yesterday were still in the second tier training mode. Today, I will increase the simulation parameters to the actual combat values. You will need to learn to work as a team to survive."

[-]

"Damn it!" Cadet Nagare screamed as once more the monitors darkened, and large red block letters informed him that he had died. He heard a similar expletive from one of the other pods as they were wiped out, again. As his pod opened he pointed and accusing finger at the single pod that had been added to the simulator farm. "You're cheating."

The Lieutenant Commander regarded them coldly as he stood up from the Dread simulation pod that controlled the single Dread they'd all been pitted against. "And what makes you say that, cadet?"

"I hit you and it didn't do anything!"

The Lieutenant Commander pressed a few buttons and the side monitor lit up with a three dimensional diagram of a Mejere Dread that had a few areas covered in red, and cones drawn with lines extending from them. The model began to slowly rotate giving a clear view of just how limited the cones actually were.

"Study this carefully cadets, the areas in red are the areas you can damage on a Dread with your current weapons and the cones show the approach necessary to get through their shields at a reasonable combat range. Cadet Nagare, if you continue with your insubordination you will be dismissed. Next group to simulators." He ordered coldly.

[-]

Evening came without a single kill or meaningful damage having been done to Lieutenant Commander's Dread.

"We didn't shoot his down once." Cadet Ikari noted.

"It didn't look like most of us even saw him before we got shot down. Is this really fair? The Lieutenant Commander's an ace." Cadet Tenkawa added.

"I think he was actually going easy on us." Cadet Amada stated. "I saw a few times when he could have easily avoided fire, but let himself get hit."

The cadets went quiet.

[-]

The end of the month finally came where once there had been fifty Men of Tarak, there was now only twenty. They'd only managed to shoot down a simulated Dread with actual combat values a couple of times, and never when it was piloted by the Lieutenant Commander. He drilled into them that they needed to work as a team, and taught them to work in a mutually supporting formation of four Vanguards that was designed to be able to break into two pairs of wingmen.

The Lieutenant Commander looked at them coolly after the morning roll call was finished. They all knew they'd be boarding the Ikazuchi later today, and get their actual machines. If anything the Lieutenant Commander had seemed to be colder towards them as this day had approached.

"I could lie to you about your chances, but you've seen the reality in the simulator. I've done what I can to help you, but most of you will not survive if we meet the enemy today. You need to consider yourselves already dead. In order for any of you have any hope of surviving, you need to stop worrying about the fact some of you will die, and not feel sorry for yourselves. If you think you're something special and lose focus on your job, it won't just be yourself that you'll be killing as a result. Dismissed."

[-]

Meia looked over her Dread teams she wasn't happy with the results, but at least they now had a semblance of what was needed. She was dreading that they were going to lose somebody on this op. Magno had gotten intelligence that Tarak was going to launch their colony ship, the Ikazuchi.

[-]


	2. Chapter 2

[-]

Ranma looked over the squad of Tsukumo type Vanguard units under his command. On paper eighteen Tsukumo type Vanguard units represented a significant force. In practice the matter was quite different. The first hint of the problem was that they were the only squad of Vanguards assigned to the Ikazuchi, despite it having the space to house far more.

The men of the third generation he'd been training to use these units all had less than a hundred hours of simulator time, and had never actually turned one of these units on or had to deal with the G forces of actual space combat. There simply wasn't the fuel or spare resources for it, and yet these men would be going to the front lines today. Most likely very few of them would live to see tomorrow, contrary to what they were trying to tell the recruits this new type was inferior to the model it was replacing.

The aggressive attacks from Mejere had driven them from their colonies, asteroid mining facilities, and now even the surface of Tarak itself. They'd been forced underground on their own planet. The Ikazuchi had been rebuilt in a massive canyon that was the closest thing they still had to a space port. The mess of weapon systems and sensors around sprawling around its rim were meant as a deterrent. The loss of the colonies and asteroid mines had cut them off from several rare minerals that were necessary in the production of advanced technology and weapons. The loss of most of their factories from raids on the surface had only exacerbated the problem.

The results were evident everywhere on the Ikazuchi. Everywhere you looked there was technology that only ten years ago would be considered primitive. The scientists and engineers were working wonders, but this is what they'd been reduced to. The simple truth was that they were losing this war, everyone could feel it. Even the wide eyes green recruits in the next room weren't really buying into the propaganda that High Command was desperately trying to use to keep morale up. There were rumors that High Command was in talks to surrender to Mejere, and many seemed to think that slavery was better than death.

Ranma rested his hand on the leg an old well used Scope Dog type Vanguard that had been a staple of the 2nd generation's expansion into space. He'd managed to keep bringing it back, and it still functioned, after a fashion. The beam weaponry that it had once been equipped with had been lost due to a lack of replacement parts, and replaced with more primitive ballistics. It still served him, but where once it had been able to shoot down Mejere Dreads it was now reduced to damaging them with precise deflection shots. The shoulder pauldron was still painted red. As one of the few remaining veteran pilots, and very few surviving aces, command had been willing to allow him to keep it in the colors of a unit from which he was the only remaining survivor. It was small comfort to know that the Mejere military had put a bounty on him, given what they had been reduced to.

[-]

Hibiki carefully made his way through security. Luckily for him they were still loading cargo onto the Ikazuchi. He'd made sure to do his homework, but he recognized he was lucky to have gotten this far without getting spotted. The dust blowing through the canyon had ended up helping a lot. Still even as he made his way up to his planned entrance point, he was kicking himself.

Why'd he have to go and run his mouth? The guys at the factory were always giving him crap, and he'd ended up going and declaring that not only would he steal a Vanguard but a specifically a Vanguard with a part that he'd marked. All so he could show them what the fully assembled unit actually looked like. There were so many holes in this plan that the only reason he had any faith this was going to work was because he kept telling himself he could pull it off. By all right they should have noticed the part, and not used it. Even if they did it was a roll of the dice that he'd manage to avoid the roving guard patrols, and get all the way to the hangar. He'd made sure to do his homework, but there were so many variables.

[-]

"Okay men, once we break space and get into orbit we're going to deploy and form a close space patrol. The more Vanguards we can get operational the shorter your shifts will be. You will man your units, activate them, and run through the start up checklist. You will not deviate from the start up checklist, or I will have your balls. Do we understand each other?!" Ranma demanded, not able to shift from his mind that they'd be lucky if even half of these men survived the day. He didn't need some idiot hotshot somehow managing to bypass the safeties and making matters worse by lighting off their booster in here.

They had two hours to make sure everything was spaceworthy. Something as minor as a bad seal could get people killed in space. The pilot suits they wore were self contained in order to prevent a cockpit breach from leading to instant death, but that didn't mean one could be lax with their the cockpit seals or those of the space suits themselves.

[-]

Hibiki felt rather confident with himself as the door slid open. The trick had worked as planned, he'd just not been doing it right for some reason originally. He had, had to put a lot of research in to figure out that trick.

He stepped through and just had to gawk. So these were what the completed Vanguards looked like. On either side of him stood giant mechanical men. On their right shoulders rested a box of eight missiles, two high and four across. Shiny glass like heads gleamed in the artificial light of the hanger. On their backs were things that looked like large backpacks. Large rifles were attached to large pieces of cloth that crossed from the left shoulder to the right hip.

At the end of the row was a Vanguard that was different. Instead of single optic it had three large optics mounted in a spherical head that he could see was designed to freely rotate. Hibiki's memory was sparked when he saw that the right shoulder pauldron was painted red. It was a Scope Dog, from the Red Shoulder Battalion. He remembered reading about them, they were supposed to be a really hardcore unit. Why was there only one here?

"State your name and purpose here." A synthetic voice demanded. Hibiki realized that the Scope Dog's head was turned towards him. Shit.

"Hibiki Tokai, I'm a mechanic." He bluffed, thankful he'd somehow managed to stay in control of his bowels.

The cockpit slid open to the side and a man with long black hair in a ponytail and clothed in black stood up. "Good. Eleven of these Vanguards are not combat ready yet. You can help me get these greenhorns sorted out."

[-]

Duero McFile, like the other cadets watched the broadcast on the large projection monitor. He saw the propaganda for what it was, a lot of chest beating. He had seen the reports of how the war was progressing, and had looked up the record of this bald man with the thin goatee. This captain had a pure political appointment with his prior experience having been a minister in charge of propaganda campaigns, rather than military action.

He only half paid attention to the man's speech until he concluded it by throwing out the established schedule and ordering that the Ikazuchi be launched immediately. Apparently he didn't think it necessary to wait for the designated hour, despite the fact that undoubtedly the various work crews were still working to make things ready. Thankfully the acceleration compensation systems meant that they were free to continue mingling.

[-]

Magno smiled to herself as their passive thermal sensors picked up a large object leaving the surface. Their intelligence had been right on the money. The Ikazuchi was being launched earlier than what their sources had indicated, but that suited her just fine. That meant that there was less waiting before they could claim their prize. She signaled the Dreads to be put on alert, and the engines to be brought online. For the moment they'd continue to hide in the debris of a destroyed Tarak ship. Unlike the vessel they were hiding in currently the Ikazuchi was Tarak's half of the original colony ship, and thus should be advanced enough in of itself to be worth the prize. It should also be filled with plenty of goodies, given they apparently wanted to turn it into their flagship.

It was a shame they were so understaffed when they had an opportunity like this in front of them. It'd have been really nice to have Rebecca's ship helping them, like Meia had wanted.

[-]

Hibiki made a point to avoid the Vanguard with the part he'd marked as he made his way around helping to try to get the Vanguards online. Lieutenant Commander Saotome, as the pilot of the Scope Dog had introduced himself, didn't care about the fact he was obviously a Third Class citizen. His only comment on noticing the bag of tools he'd used to get in here was ask if he was good with computers, and a tight smile when he'd affirmed he was. Habiki's impression of the man was that he didn't care who he was as long as he got results. They'd gotten two additional Vanguards up and operational already, and Hibiki was finishing troubleshooting a problem with a third unit with the help of a Hi-Type robot.

"What was your name again, kid?" The Lieutenant Commander asked.

"Hibiki." He corrected himself. "Hibiki Tokai."

The man looked tired in a way Hibiki wasn't familiar with, while smiling warmly. "Thank you, Hibiki Tokai. Thanks to you we'll at least be able to get eleven units up there. I'm afraid we're going to need to deploy soon, so finish up with this unit and you can enjoy some of the refreshments in the next room." The Lieutenant Commander declared before tossing him a ID card.

Hibiki started as he realized it was the Lieutenant Commander's ID card. He started to object, but the Lieutenant Commander was already fastening himself into his harness, and by the time he'd figured out what he wanted to say the Lieutenant Commander had closed his cockpit and dropped down through the launch chute.

[-]

"Remember use your missiles in sets of one or two when firing on Dreads. Anything more is just wasteful." He didn't expect them to be able to do snap shots well enough to effectively use their rifles, but they were better than nothing for when the newbies inevitably decided to start trying to spray wildly. He'd done what he could to try to prevent that, but it didn't amount to much.

Ranma was proud to see that his squad was deploying in the four fingered star formation as he had taught them. That way they could break off in pairs if necessary, and have someone watching their back. It was a small thing, but it at least helped the chances a little bit that they'd survive. He'd assigned Amada and Shin to be Red 2 and Red 3 in control of their own elements respectively, both of them had shown they were competent and able to keep a cool head in the simulator at least.

"Red 2, take position on the starboard side. Red 3 you'll take port. Everyone else, follow me." Ranma ordered. They had two four point stars, and a roving trinary. For a ship this size it was completely inadequate coverage, but it was the best they could do with the none of the remaining Vanguards ready to launch.

"Red leader, this is Red 3 I'm picking up something." Ranma looked over in Red 3's direction just in time to see a cluster of energy weapons take out the entire star. The engine plumes of incoming Dreads traced across space, and he could just make out a cruiser prowling in a nearby wreck.

Ranma began maneuvering and letting single missiles go as soon as he had firing solutions. They were heat seeking missiles that were primitive by the standards he'd been used to, but they did their job. He made sure to network with his wingmen so they'd not be duplicating targets. He went ahead and opened a communications channel as he saw one of the missiles run true and send a Dread spinning off with a damaged engine. "Captain we have an attack cruiser, and Dreads inbound." His message finished, he cut the channel. He didn't have the time to try to have a conversation in the middle of this.

The wingman off to his right died as he proved too slow in following him into a dodge, the victim of an energy blast from a white Dread. He managed to snap shot a stream of bullets that damaged the Dread's engine. With the original beam armament, the Dread would have been dead. He fired off a missile at the white Dread as it began to curve off due to the engine damage. The missile flew true and she too was sent careening off.

[-]

Meia struggled to get control of her Dread. The Red Shoulder was here. She'd heard the stories about this pilot. The rumors were that he couldn't be killed. She adjusted a few switches and got engine output balanced and stabilized. She had less than 50% of normal thrust capacity, but she wasn't out of it yet.

"All flights, avoid the Red Shoulder and continue with mission. We need to get the boarding parties onto the Ikazuchi." She ordered.

"The Red Shoulder is here?!" Jura declared way more hopefully than she had any reason to.

"Jura, no." Barnette objected before she had a chance to. "It's not worth it."

"It's a million credit bounty." Jura insisted. "One M-I-L-L-I-O-N credits."

"Jura, fall in. We need to get Gascogne's ship on board." Meia ordered.

Jura closed her channel and broke away with Barnette forming up on her wing. Damn it, they were understaffed to begin with. She mentally wrote them off. Everyone she'd ever heard of trying to actively take down the Red Shoulder had either been destroyed, captured, or limped back with their ship badly damaged. Their mission was to capture the Ikazuchi, not tangle with a Tarak ace, and they were too understaffed to lose anyone else to Jura's stupidity. They needed everyone to help with getting Gascogne's ship on board.

She keyed up the heavy gun Dread that was being piloted by a newbie. Thankfully that Dread had only suffered minor damage. What was her name again? The computer helpfully brought it up for her as the pilot's assault suit equipped face appeared in a holographic window. "Dita, make us a hole." She ordered.

"Roger, dodger." Dita responded.

[-]

Ranma resisted the urge to punch one of the consoles as the last of Red 2's group disappeared in a rapidly expanding ball of superheated gas and debris. His single surviving wingman was the last one left. He'd already lost nine men today, and they'd not actually managed to shoot down a single Dread. A blue Dread managed to blow a hatch in the aft of the ship, and the Mejere ships began flying in following a troop transport. The joke was on them. There was no way that they could have enough troops on that dinky little transport to seize the Ikazuchi from the hundreds of men onboard.

A red Dread quickly reoriented and navigated around with her purple wingman in tow, setting up a very direct attack path on them. Ranma recognized the equipped modules as a heavily shielded configuration. That configuration lost a lot of speed and maneuverability in exchange for being able to take a lot of punishment from ranged weapons. There however was a fundamental flaw to that setup, that his Scope Dog was well equipped to deal with.

"Ikari, we're going to charge in full burn. Hold fire until you're within ten meters, and then let them have it." Ranma ordered as he lit off the booster. The Tsukumo-type had lost the cartridge punch system in order to reduce complexity, so wasn't able to do what he was going to try. Ranma kept an easy hand on his controls, making slight adjustments to dodge incoming fire. He saw the rapidly expanding blip where his wingman had been on the sensor readout. There was no time to think about that now.

He closed, dragging a magnetized hand along the hull of the Dread as it began passing overhead. As he closed in on where the generator was on these things, he carefully increased the electromagnet's power. Then the instant was there and the carefully timed cartridge punch forced its way through the hull and into the generator's vital systems causing the Dread to instantly lose power. Extricating his hand and pulling the rifle back off its harness, Ranma fired an extended burst into the Dread's wingman as they attempted to come about damaging their engines and sending them careening off. He let his last missile loose after her and ejected the missile block. It was just deadweight now.

According to his sensors all the other Mejere ships had already entered the Ikazuchi. The attack cruiser was still sulking around and trying to take potshots, but they'd basically won. In order for an attack cruiser like that to even hope to have sent enough people in to seize the Ikazuchi, there'd basically be no one onboard that thing. He had confidence that the soldiers onboard the Ikazuchi would be able to repel boarders successfully given they should outnumber the attacking women by more than two to one. The remaining Dreads out here were in a condition where the Ikazuchi should be able to destroy or recover them easy enough. That left the attack cruiser itself.

Ranma opened the throttle as he rocketed towards the attack cruiser. A decade ago these ships were little more than an annoyance that preyed on poorly guarded freighters. They were completely unarmed except for a pair of large beam projectors mounted up top that were only really good for anti-ship use, and a Dread launch that hung out of the bottom feeding from the main body. They were only designed to handle around a dozen Dreads. That however had been back when beam weaponry had been standard, and the missiles Vanguards had been equipped with had carried sufficient explosives to actually take a Dread down. Now, now this light attack cruiser was making the Ikazuchi actually have to fight, and it was getting the better end of the deal.

Ranma adjusted his trim to approach the ventral side, the doors covering the Dread launch bay were weak enough to be forced open, and from there a little toy from his days as part of the Intelligence section of the Battalion would take care of the rest.

[-]

Magno felt a cold thrill run down her spine as Barnette closed her transmission. The Red Shoulder was coming, and beyond the bridge crew and herself there was basically no one onboard their ship. Anyone that could be pulled from their station had been to give them enough troops to have a chance of actually taking the Ikazuchi. Thankfully Meia had reported in that they weren't meeting much resistance in seizing the Ikazuchi, and were making good progress.

"Move us closer in." Magno ordered after a moment's consideration. At the very least that'd give them a chance to retrieve their troops. The Red Shoulder was supposed to be good, but ultimately it was only one man.

[-]

Ranma used the cartridge punch to create a handhold, and forced the hanger shutter to slide open. He checked the seals on his suit as he made his way down the Dread launch and recovery bay. They'd closed the armored hatch that separated the Dread launch bay from the rest of the ship. Normally this would present a problem, but he had a few special computer systems from his days with the Battalion that meant he wouldn't need to force his way into the Dread hanger above.

Spotting the interface panel on his monitors he popped open the hatch, and kicking off the seat sent himself flying towards the access panel. A little fancy work with one of his toys plugged into the relevant ports, and the armored hatch above him opened up. He kicked off and glided back towards his open cockpit. They were going to win this, and bring the fight to Mejere.

[-]

The captain of the Ikazuchi had been selected for his office based on his political acumen, and ability to keep morale high as a minister of propaganda. He'd never actually been part of a military action before today. He growled to himself. The famed Red Shoulder had failed to keep the women from boarding the Ikazuchi. It was all they could do to keep them contained to the old section even as they'd taken considerable damage to the new sections of the ship.

"Men we cannot let this ship fall into the hands of the Women of Mejere." He proclaimed as he activated the controls to separate the ship.

"Sir, you can't be serious." One of his subordinates objected.

"But I am, we must protect what we can. I will separate the old from the new!"

He threw forward the lever causing the new section to be separated from the old.

[-]

He detected no active heat signatures in the Dread hangar. They had to know he was coming, so they either were going to try to make a stand of it further in or they didn't have any troops to deploy to counter his boarding attempt. Either way was fine with him. He checked his gear making sure everything was in place. He paused a moment as something that could increase his chances occurred to him. It was a long shot, but anything that'd cause them to hesitate for a brief instant was something that radically increase his chances of survival. He unsealed his helmet, and carefully splashed himself with the contents of his canteen.

The change occurred giving him the body of the hated enemy, the Women of Mejere. He activated a switch on the pilot suit, which resealed it causing it to conform to this smaller body, and resealed his helmet in place. He was a Man of Tarak. There was no obstacle too great for him to overcome. He went ahead and popped open the hatch of his Scope Dog, abandoning it.

The airlock controls were easily bypassed, and peeking down the hallway with a mirror he didn't see anyone waiting for him on the other side. The air quality sensors indicated that the air was safe and breathable, but he didn't remove his helmet. Venting sections was a classic anti-boarder tactic. Anyone foolish enough to discard their space suit during a boarding operation was just asking to get killed.

[-]

Hibiki found himself lying in some massive chamber with some kind of weird giant glowing thing hovering in the middle. The Hi-Type he'd been using to help him troubleshoot the Vanguards was lying nearby. The last thing he had remembered was an explosion as he finally managed to find someone with the Tarakian wine that was on offer. He wasn't sure he was even still on the Ikazuchi given this place looked nothing like any of the other parts of the Ikazuchi that he'd seen.

Looking around he spotted some kind of blue spacecraft buried in the wall, and what looked like some kind of monster was lying a little further down the chamber. Opposite there was a hole leading into this chamber, but it was at a level where it couldn't easily be reached. Still he might as well try. He did a test jump only to find himself continuing to slowly drift upward. He struggled, but he was unable to effect his movement as he continued to drift across the chamber. Damn it.

The monster stirred, and noticed his predicament. "Oh wow it's a real alien."

Something hit him in the gut, and he found himself being pulled towards her. Damn it, she was going to suck the life out of him.

[-]

"Prepare the Muramasa torpedoes." The captain of the Ikazuchi ordered. They would show these women that the Men of Tarak were not to be taken lightly.

[-]

"Magno the Butcher. Come to see the havoc you've wrought in person." A feminine voice declared with pure venom.

Magno's eyes went wide as she slowly turned around. Standing at the entrance to the bridge was a woman in a dark space suit that was doing little to hide her curves.

"I've overrided the door control, so if you have any friends running about they're not going to be able to help you." The woman noted coldly. "I expect I shouldn't need to explain the drill to you, you've put innocent men on the receiving end of it often enough. Do what I say, or Magno gets executed sooner rather than later."

Magno went ahead and signaled the two members of her bridge crew present to obey.

"Why don't we start by having you open a hail to the Ikazuchi, I imagine your boarders have been successfully captured by now." The woman removed her helmet revealing a long mane of red hair, and steely eyes that promised death.

"Do it." Magno commanded, not feeling it the time or place to contradict the woman's notions about what had happened to the boarding party. Buzam had actually already reported in that they'd found what according to their schematics should have been the bridge, although for some reason the men had not been using it. "So you're the Red Shoulder then."

"The one you monsters couldn't kill." She shot back. "Enough stalling, get the monitor up."

A bald man that looked like a cornered feral animal came up on the screen. "What is the meaning of this?" He demanded.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Saotome, Captain I've seized control of the pirate attack cruiser. I'm sure you've captured the boarders, so get your landing parties ready. We've won today, sir." The red headed woman reported in a clipped and professional tone that was full of confidence.

"What kind of desperate deception is this? Lieutenant Commander Saotome is a Man of Tarak. We won't be fooled by such an obvious lie." He looked at something or someone off screen. "Isn't the Muramasa ready yet?" And the transmission cut.

The red haired woman was clearly angry and looked like she was ready to kill someone. "Raise him again." She ordered coldly.

"The Ikazuchi is refusing our hails." Belvedere reported, clearly scared of the implications of her response. She'd taken over communication duties due to Ezra and Celtic joining the boarding team.

Magno decided to help her by drawing the attention onto herself. She was in no hurry to die but she had, had a nice full life of over a hundred years of life. "So what are you going to do now Red Shoulder? I could always use another capable hand."

The redhead sneered in derision at her. "As if I'd ever help you." She walked up and slammed some kind of black box thing down on her console, which caused the displays to rapidly change. "You will face justice for your crimes Magno, but not like this. The Men of Tarak stand on our two feet."

The women punched a code into the console next to the door causing it to slide open. The redhead paused as she crossed the threshold of the door and glanced back at them and put her helmet back on. Then she was gone. Magno wasn't surprised to discover that they were locked out of the bridge consoles. The only station that seemed to still be active was communications. Well at least there was that.

[-]

Ranma rushed back to his Scope Dog and quickly navigated out of the hangar and launch bay. With their navigational controls locked this pirate ship wasn't going anywhere soon. For now the priority was to sort out this out. Capturing an intact Mejere pirate attack cruiser was a boon they couldn't throw away. With this ship they'd be able to finally turn the tables on the Women of Mejere and sow enough chaos that the Men of Tarak would no longer need to cower underground in constant fear of Mejere's raids. They could finally...

Ranma blinked as his sensor picked up two ships instead of one. A closer look with the targeting sensors in the Scope Dog's head revealed that the old section had been separated from the new. But why would they do that? Once they captured the boarders there would be no reason to attempt such a thing. A sinking sensation formed in the pit of his stomach as he looked at the overall situation, and the ramifications occurred to him. The pirate attack cruiser had clearly begun moving in on the new section after he'd boarded it. Given practically no one had been onboard the attack cruiser that could only mean they were trying to retrieve their personnel who'd seized control on the old section, which would have naturally prompted the separation.

The Scope Dog's optics could pick out the giant space torpedoes that were being prepared to be launched from the Ikazuchi's new sections. He could also see that the guard ships were coming in on an intercept course. They had them, and he needed to stop this madness. He opened the throttle.

[-]

Author's Notes:

The Red Shoulders are a unit from the classic mecha series Armored Troopers VOTOMS. VOTOMS is considered to be the grandfather of realistic mecha, and small mecha which Vanguards fall into. Given what little distribution VOTOMS has received in the West I felt it more worthwhile to do a call out than just come up with something original.


	3. Chapter 3

[-]

Meia brought he hand up to the earbud tied into her suit's communications system. "Meia get your people out of there." The Captain ordered.

"We need to get out of here. There are space torpedoes on their way." She called out transmitting to her team. She got confirmation back from everyone but Dita. She looked over to where Barnette was consoling Jura. "Barnette, Jura come with me. We need to get Dita."

Jura looked like she was going to whine, but a little hug from Barnette quieted her before she started. Instead, Barnette answered. "We've got your back, Meia."

Meia motioned for them to follow her into the hole that Dita's Dread had made. Thankfully the artificial gravity in this section was offline, and their assault suits included maneuvering thrusters.

[-]

"There's Dita." Barnette noted pointing at a figure running among a field of complicated equipment. She'd taken off her assault suit. Dita's Dread thankfully appeared to be intact, but was buried in a nearby wall.

"Would you look at that? She's chasing a man." Jura noted, scandalized.

Meia had no doubt that she'd insure the entire ship knew about it shortly after they got back. More importantly knowing Dita, she'd probably not taken the time to take her communicator with her which is why she hadn't checked in. The man Dita was chasing didn't appear to be a threat, it wasn't like Dita had checked out any weapons beyond the assault suit.

"Come on, we need to get her back to her ship." Meia ordered, working the assault suits thrusters to propel herself "down" towards the surface Dita was currently using as a floor. Out of the sides of the assault suit's display she could see Barnette and Dita following her. She adjusted her approach attitude changing her orientation so she'd land feet first, and used short controlled bursts of thrust to slow her descent.

"Dita, get back here!" She yelled with the aid of the assault suit's speaker system.

Dita stopped. "But Leader."

"No buts! We have space torpedoes inbound if you don't get out of here you're going to die." Meia explained with enough harshness to get through to the girl the nature of the situation they were in.

Grabbing the girl she worked the assault suit's thrusters to get Dita up to her ship. The young redhead had the grace to look apologetic and sheepish. Meia helped her get back in her cockpit, and stood on the Dreads wing looking at the still glowing consoles in Dita's Dread.

"It looks like it's online at least. Dita run a quick diagnostic." She ordered

"They all check out." Dita responded.

Meia nodded to herself, recognizing that Dita couldn't see it with her wearing an assault suit. "Once I get clear work the right and left thrusters to work yourself loose. If you can't get your Dread loose abandon it and get to my Dread. We're not leaving you behind." She jetted away.

[-]

With the women focused on that weird girl that had been chasing him Hibiki realized that they weren't paying attention to him. He quickly rushed over to where he'd woken up to this nightmare, and retrieved the thruster system from the woman's suit. A few quick modifications and he had it rigged up so he could operate the thing. Pointing himself in the direction of the hole he'd clearly come in through he jumped and lit the thing off. It was at that point he realized that he'd failed to setup a means to control the thing.

He screamed an expletive as he moved his body around trying to adjust his flight attitude so that he'd go through the large hole instead of being turned into a stain on the wall. After a few tense seconds, and pulling his legs up he just managed to make it through the hole and immediately released the makeshift harness. He made contact with the deck just in time to see the thruster pack slam into the wall and bounce careening from wall to wall before eventually traveling past the containment field out into space.

Everything was in chaos up here. People were running around rushing to any available spacecraft. He noticed that the Tsukumo-type Vanguard with the part he'd marked was lying in the nearby hangar bay, and he still had the Hi-Type with him. He decided he should be able to get it operational quickly enough, and rushed over to it.

[-]

Meia climbed in her Dread after seeing that Jura and Barnette had both safely climbed into their Dreads. Everything booted up and engines started up, although the thrust was still dropping. It should be enough to get her out of here. She went ahead and opened comm channels with Jura, Dita, and Barnette.

"Leader, I've gotten my Dread free." Dita reported in.

"Barnette, the engine isn't starting." A clearly upset Jura was saying, in a message that hadn't been intended for her.

Barnette in turned seemed to be working several of the rarely used controls in her Dread. "Give me a second Jura, I've almost gotten my engines back online. We can get out of this together."

[-]

The propaganda minister in currently in charge of the Ikazuchi's new sections smiled as the Muramasa torpedoes detonated warping space. The Women of Mejere had been taught a lesson this day. He had saved the Ikazuchi, and driven them back. Still he had to wonder about why they'd tried such an obvious ruse and hadn't attempted to flee.

[-]

Ranma was shocked to wakefulness as the Scope Dog's systems roused him with an electrical shock. He quickly scanned the monitors and worked the sensors to scan the local area. Tarak was no longer within visual range. His scopes only showed a sea of stars extending into an infinite expanse. The pirate attack cruiser, the Ikazuchi's old section, and various bits of debris were drifting nearby. It looked like the pirates had managed to retrieve their Dreads, or they'd been utterly destroyed.

The last thing he remembered was trying to shoot down the inbound torpedoes, and then something had happened when they'd went off that hadn't been an explosion. He could only assume that they were some kind of hyperspace weapon, and they'd been transported somewhere else in the universe as a result. He checked the readouts. Excluding cartridge punches he was out of ammo, and he was almost out of propellant. He ran a few calculations and exhaled as the results came out as he'd feared. There wasn't enough propellant left to reverse his current momentum on this outbound trajectory.

He had a few hours worth of air left, but space was going to claim him if the pirates didn't. Maybe it'd be best if he just went ahead and embraced the cold expanse.

[-]

Gascogne pulled herself up off her console. What had happened? She'd retrieved Barnette and Jura and delivered them to the Ikazuchi, because their ship was compromised. Jura and Barnette had went with Meia to try to find Dita, and she'd been on the line with Magno trying to figure out what to do about the incoming torpedoes with their engines dead cutting off their means of escape.

After a few minutes her console chirped, and Magno's face reappeared. "It appears we're alive." She noted.

"Certainly looks that way." Gascogne noted in amusement. She felt the ship shift under her. "Looks like something is happening."

"Gascogne, I want you to retrieve the Red Shoulder. I think she's drifting nearby, and it'd be a waste to lose her."

"She, Captain?" Gascogne inquired expecting she'd somehow misheard.

"Yes I was surprised as well, but the pilot of that armored suit is apparently actually a red haired woman. One Lieutenant Commander Saotome."

"You sure this is a good idea? That ace isn't someone to be trifled with, and we can't replace this recovery ship." Gascogne cautioned. Her ship was a modular craft that was currently configured for troop transport, rather then its normal purpose of inflight refueling and rearmament. The mechanical arms that allowed for recovery of damaged Dreads however was still equipped, which she'd used to recover Barnette and Jura.

"I think we can. She didn't shoot me when she had the chance."

[-]

Hibiki woke up to find guns pointed at him by women that looked like they'd be more then happy to use them. He put up his hands. He had no illusions about being able to fight them when the machine wasn't working, even if he had, had any idea how to operate it. It wasn't like he even had a weapon.

"Get out of there." A woman in a red tunic thing, with a white shirt and some pink fin thing on her head demanded. Maybe they were another species of women?

[-]

Duero felt a gun prod him in the back. He held his hands up, and stood up. Something had happened that had knocked them unconscious. Instead of directing him to an escape pod, they marched him off to a small area and directed him to sit down in a chair.

[-]

Ranma carefully unfolded an old photo of the Battalion. The last time he'd asked one of the doctors bringing him out of cryo they had told him that physically he was around 20 years old. He'd stopped doing the math on how long it had been since he'd been produced. He'd been 16 when he had been moved into active service with the Tarak military, to help counter the growing threat of Mejere. Based on his aptitude scores he'd been made part of the 51st Battalion's S2 intelligence division. Back then they'd come to be known as the "First to Mejere" due to a successful raid into Mejere's system in response to growing incursions on Tarak colonies.

The tradition of painting the shoulder red had came later, started by the first ace in the Battalion as a mark to distinguish his accomplishment. It'd grown into a tradition to mark the accomplishment of reaching ace status. Then the hard times had began. Under constant attacks and lacking replacements, the 51st Battalion effectively became a unit of only red shouldered units and so they'd earned the nickname that had stuck with them to the end. There'd been rumors about some new secret discovery that would allow them to take the fight back to Mejere called Project-J.

That was a long time ago. They'd never been able to regain the initiative. It had just been a slow march back. The Women of Mejere were relentless, and never satisfied with the damage they'd wrought. While the propaganda exaggerated things for effect, the Women of Mejere were monsters.

Ranma glanced at the monitors again. Something odd had started happening a little while ago. The Scope Dog's joints had seized up, and based on his readings he was actually starting to drift towards the two ships. It wasn't a question of if he was going to get captured, it was a question of when and how. He glanced at his sidearm again. There was always that option. Even if these were pirates he had no illusions about what would happen once they got their hands on him. The only reason they might keep him alive was that the bounty was apparently ten times as much if he was delivered alive to the Mejere military, and that was only if their greed outweighed their infamous wrath.

Ranma clenched his teeth as he felt the metallic clang of a magnetic grappler seizing the Scope Dog. He looked at the sidearm again, but couldn't bring himself to end it. Not after everything he'd been through and managed to survive.

[-]

Meia watched as the Paksis encrusted Scope Dog was carried in. She had over twenty troops with a combination of rifles and laser rings trained on the cockpit as Gascogne's ship put it down before traveling further into the Ikazuchi and setting down. The Reg crew that had been riding with Gascogne quickly disembarked and added their number to those training weapons on the Scope Dog.

"Come out with your hands were I can see them." Meia ordered. She had a team standing by to force the cockpit open if necessary.

The cockpit slid open to the side, revealing a pilot in a dark space suit. With a slight subtle push off their pilot seat they "dropped" to the deck. She could see that as hard as it was to believe that what the Captain had said was true. The infamous Red Shoulder was actually a woman. Her personal suspicion was that she must have been captured and brainwashed by the Men of Tarak. It felt gratifying to know one of the most feared members of the Tarak military wasn't actually a Man of Tarak.

The woman pulled off her helmet revealing a long ponytail of red hair, and a pair of eyes that spoke of a dangerous person backed with a steel will. She could see that the Red Shoulder was looking at all the guns trained on her, and was weighing the odds. She stood proud next to her disabled machine, and Meia found herself respecting the woman's defiance.

"So what now?" She demanded icily, keeping her hands away from her sidearm but not raising them in surrender.

"I believe I offered you a job." The Captain stated as she opened a communications window using Gascogne's ship.

"Captain, you shouldn't..." Magno held up a hand that she should be quiet, and Meia ceased her objection.

"It's okay. The young lady already had a chance to kill me and didn't take it. I believe she has a sense of justice and honor." Magno stated.

"I wish I could say the same for you. What's your game?" Was the red head's cold response.

"As we both know, we are no longer anywhere near Tarak. We are currently in some unknown part of space. I won't claim that I don't intend to collect your bounty once we return to Mejere space but you are worth far more alive then dead, and what I need right now are skilled pilots." Magno responded. Meia could see the Red Shoulder relax ever so slightly. "Given you aren't without justification for concern for your well being though I'll assign Meia as your bodyguard, if you accept."

"Captain?" She asked. The Red Shoulder looked at her and seemed to be coldly assessing her.

"Your terms are acceptable." The Red Shoulder responded.

[-]

The Captain had ordered that the Red Shoulder was to be brought on to Shimakaze. Her arms had been bound, and it's been a tense flight as they'd made the short trip from the Ikazuchi's hangar bay to their Dread bay. They'd had a dozen soldiers keeping beam guns trained on the Red Shoulder for the entire flight.

Meia looked over at the red haired woman as they walked down the hall together the guards arranged around them. She was surprised to find that the woman was actually shorter then her. In the hangar she'd seemed to just dominate over everything. They'd been walking down the hall in silence for what seemed like a long time now. Even though the Red Shoulder had surrendered her sidearm and her hands were bound, something about her made Meia feel that she was the one that was unarmed.

"I assume you're a pilot." The Red Shoulder stated in a way that made it a question.

"I'm a leader of the Dread teams." Meia felt small as the red head turned and looked at her coldly.

"You should feel proud. You murdered ten men that'd never even turned on a Vanguard before today." It was an insult wrapped in a compliment. The guards shot warning glances at the Red Shoulder but she didn't pay them any mind.

"Why are you fighting for Tarak?" Meia asked in response, seeing an opportunity to ask the question that she'd been burning to know the answer to since she'd found out the Red Shoulder was a woman.

"Because I'm a Man of Tarak." Her confident statement clashed with the reality that she clearly was not. Meia added another point to her theory that the woman had been brainwashed somehow. She must have been a great pilot before the Men of Tarak had gotten their hands on her.

"So what's your name?" Meia asked, hoping it might give some clue as to who she the Red Shoulder had been.

"I'm Lieutenant Commander Ranma Saotome, 51st Battalion of the Armored Trooper Command. You may refer to me as just Ranma if it would make you more comfortable." For a brief moment Ranma's visage softened slightly, and Meia noticed she was a very attractive woman.

"Meia Gibson, Dread commander." Meia responded.

[-]

"It would seem that the situation has been reversed from when we last met in person." Magno noted.

Ranma glanced at the dozen rifles pointed at him. "I'm glad you think so highly of me."

"Just a precaution. Can you unlock our systems, please?" The old woman asked with false politeness.

"I'll need access to your console." Ranma noted.

Magno stepped out of it, and made a gesture to offer him her seat. "Go ahead." A dozen beam rifles tracked him as he took the seat. The only reason it'd been as easy as it had been originally, was Magno had already been logged in with an account that had sufficient and raised privileges. He went to work logging into the user account he'd created, which tripped the preset scripts. If they shot him now they'd still effectively be locked out, and have more serious problems shortly. He paused a moment glancing around, seeing what they'd do.

Not seeing any indication they were going to try something quite yet, he went ahead and opened a terminal window. Setting up the proper batch of scripts he setup the command line to execute the scripts as the root superuser. The password to which had been overwritten by his little device. The password prompt came up, and he put the preselected wrong password in, and stopped.

"What are you planning to do with me once I turn everything back on?" He asked, making a point to pull his hands away.

"I offered you a job, and I intend to stick to that. It's not like either of us has anywhere to go."

Ranma studied her trying to pick out some subterfuge, but found none. "I see."

"So what would happen if someone pushed enter right now?" Magno asked, apparently having caught on that there was more in play.

"This ship would activate its self destruct sequence on a silent 30 second timer. Of course, you only have 8 minutes left before it does it anyways due to the timer that started when I logged in." Ranma responded.

He could see the people around him starting to panic. Magno and the tall woman standing next to her however stayed calm. "You play a hard game. You looking for better terms, perhaps?"

"Just the assurance of letting you know that if you cross me, you're not free and clear." Ranma responded coldly. For the moment at least, he had them and they knew it. He opened a separate terminal window and brought up the graphical countdown on the self destruct, for those who might think he was bluffing.

Magno started chuckling, stopping after a few minutes. "I like the way you think. Girls put the guns down and leave, if she wanted to do us harm you'd not stop her."

Ranma allowed himself to relax, ever so slightly, as the weapons were brought down and the guards walked off. "I'm glad you understand." He cleared the password, and put the proper one in running the batch of scripts. A cascade of windows hovered into existence around the bridge. He went ahead and ran a few standard diagnostic programs.

The aquaponics and life support systems appeared to be fine, for the moment at least. Artificial gravity was offline throughout the entire ship due to failsafes kicking in after some malfunctions in the control systems. Main engines were offline and he wasn't sure what to make of the readings from the Paksis reactor. At the moment emergency power system was what was keeping them alive. The backup fusion reactors had developed a numbers of faults and been shutdown as failsafes had kicked it. The situation was further complicated by something else, which was beyond his level to do anything about. "You're back online, but the Ikazuchi's systems are taking over yours."

"I see. What can you do about it?"

Ranma typed out a set of scripts, and checked out the existing system architecture and programs. A few commands and he'd gotten a back up process started to various optical drives on the ship. He went ahead and setup a gateway, and dropped a few scripts into the Ikazuchi's system that would erase the personnel files starting with his own and clean up after itself. "I'm backing up your data, so at least that'll be safe. There's nothing I can do to stop the systems merging."

"You seem to really know how to use that."

"What you're running is still a UNIX based system. It's not that complicated." He said casually, trying to brush it off.

The last thing they needed to know was he'd been part of a team that had setup on one of the numerous asteroids in stable orbit over Mejere, and that they'd cracked into the Mejere information network. The research of a previous team that'd spent a year figuring out the quirks of how the Mejere systems were configured had provided them with the basis. The Mejere written language having already been figured out and tracked, so language translation hadn't been a real issue. He had been assigned to help defend the small base with his Scope Dog, but had spent most of his time as low level operator freeing the actual hackers from more menial tasks. He'd learned a lot of tricks from them.

"Is there anything else you can do at the moment?" Magna prompted. Ranma shook his head. What was happening between the two systems was beyond his ability to do anything about. "Very well, why don't you and Meia get some R&R in? I'm sure we'll be needing both of your services again soon enough."

[-]

The door to the bridge closed leaving them alone. Meia looked over at Ranma, trying to figure her out. The woman had for all intents and purposes just threatened to blow up the ship, just to show she could. "Why'd you do that?" She finally asked.

Ranma looked at her coolly. "The only reason I'm alive is that your Captain recognizes there's a larger payday if I'm delivered alive. The only reason I've not been shoved into a cryotube is your Captain realizes I'm too useful to keep on the sidelines. I might be working _with_ you because of the situation we're in, but I'm not working _for_ you."

Meia caught the distinction, but didn't understand it. She decided to shelve that for the moment. "So what do you want to do?"

"A shower, and a nap before the next scramble would be nice." Was Ranma's immediate reply. Meia noted her request didn't involve a trip to ship's spa or other things that were common in her Dread group. She couldn't recall anyone asking for anything so basic.

Meia debated the options. The Captain had stressed that she needed to keep an eye on and protect Ranma from elements of the crew that'd want vengeance for various reasons. The simplest solution seemed to be just having the woman use her quarters for the moment. Despite her threats and clear hostility, Ranma hadn't been destructive in a way she felt particularly concerned about what would happen to her personal effects.

"I'll take you to my quarters then."

[-]

Meia looked up to see Ranma walk out of the bathroom with a towel around her waist, and her entire torso exposed. She got a very good look at the redhead's figure. She noticed that Ranma didn't seem to have any excess fat on her, and was rather well endowed. She tore her eyes away and looked up to see Ranma regarding her curiously.

"You're a deviant?" Ranma asked in mixture of surprise and amusement.

Meia didn't catch her meaning, and decided to wait and let Ranma explain. Ranma walked over and sat on the bed next to her, apparently completely comfortable with the fact her torso was completely uncovered. Meia also noticed that the severe edge she had, had before had softened.

"They say deviants see something else beyond simple appreciation for physique or form when they look at someone else. Apparently they develop strange feelings and attractions."

"What happens to them on Tarak?" Meia asked, trying to gauge where Ranma was coming from with this.

"They're reported and executed." Ranma said simply, as if it was simply what was expected. "Don't worry, I'll keep your secret." Ranma stated. Glancing over at her dresser Ranma picked the music box that was one of the few mementos Meia had. Meia kept an eye on her as the redhead carefully opened it and looked at the torn picture the was inside. "You're a pet, I guess that makes sense."

"Pet?" Meia asked not catching the reference.

"Yes, someone was rich enough to order you produced because they wanted a kid. Unlike the rest of us that are produced to fill a need." Meia watched as Ranma gently placed the music box back on her dresser. Ranma seemed almost relaxed, and Meia noticed she had a number of scars. She decided to try to keep drawing her out, try to see if she could stir some memories.

"What about you?" Meia prompted.

"It doesn't matter." Ranma responded brushing her off. "So do I meet your aesthetic approval?"

Ranma's expression was odd mix of amusement and curiosity. Meia decided to be honest. "Yes." For all her weird quirks she found the woman attractive.

Ranma smiled. "So you're like those people who appreciate art, and write long articles about how it means this or that, right? So what does my body tell you?"

That wasn't it at all. Meia decided it was better to humor her, for the moment at least. Reaching out she gently touched one of the scars on Ranma's back. "You've seen a lot of battle haven't you?"

Ranma nodded, and seemed to be comfortable with her touch as Meia traced her hand down some of the scars. "What else?" Ranma asked.

"You clearly keep yourself fit, and it looks like you have a sharp mind." Meia knew she wasn't any good at this, but Ranma didn't seem to mind. She noticed that Ranma's lips were a nice pink color. She was startled by the beep of a communication channel opening, and looked over her shoulder to see the Captain staring at her through a larger holographic window. She suddenly felt very small.

"It seems you two are getting along well." The Captain noted.

"She just wanted to look at my scars." Ranma explained.

The Captain seemed satisfied with the explanation. "We're picking up an intermittent sensor contact. Meia, I want you to pull your team together and see about setting up a patrol. The Lieutenant Commander should be able to help you."

The transmission window closed leaving them alone together, again. Ranma got up and grabbing her clothes, went into the bathroom. Meia clenched her fist in frustration. Belvedere was going to insure that the entire ship knew about it and interpreted them as a couple. She didn't have time to worry about that nonsense. The first thing she was going to need to do was contact Gascogne and see how Reg was coming with getting their machines spaceworthy again. Then she'd need to get her pilots together and see about dealing with this issue.

Ranma reemerged fully dressed, and walking over to her and firmly gripped her shoulder. "I've got your back." Ranma said while giving her shoulder a slight comforting squeeze. Meia expected the gesture was more about Tarak's odd customs, and Ranma's notions about "art appreciation" then affection. Still she found herself warmed by it.

Meia nodded her thanks. "Let's head out."

[-]

Transmission confirmed from probe.

Establishing connection...

Downloading...

Processing Data...

Salvage confirmed. Continue observation.

Hailing...

Transmitting Data...

[-]

Bart Garsus was the third son of the head of Garsus Foods. He'd lived a good life, but his brothers had already been produced to take over the operations of Garsus Foods leaving him in a quandry of what to do with his life. His father hadn't produced him for any specific purpose, he'd boarded the Ikazuchi hoping to secure a contract for the new product line, which would bring more profits to Garsus Foods then the currently contracted for food pellets.

This was the new flagship, it wasn't supposed to have gotten into any real danger. Especially not just in making orbit over Tarak. He was just here to help lay the groundwork for a new food supply contract. His quick thinking had allowed him to weather the assault by hiding in his locker. The women hadn't been vicious enough to blow away such an innocuous piece of scenery, and hadn't spent the time trying to open them. The only problem was that he wasn't sure how to open it from the inside, and he couldn't really see out at all.

It'd been quiet for a long time now, and he'd been fiddling with things trying to get the locker open for what seemed like it had been an eternity now. Finally it popped open and he stumbled out. There was no sign of any women anywhere. All that greeted him was a room overwhelmed with some kind of weird crystal. He exhaled, letting go of a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He'd survived.

He didn't see any evidence of what had happened to everyone else. He'd heard shooting, and people being marched around at gun point. They must have been moved somewhere else, and had their life sucked out of them. Maybe some of them were still alive. If he could find them, maybe he could free them, and they could retake the ship.

[-]

Bart spotted a member of the medical crew, and a third class citizen sitting in chairs facing each other in a pair of chairs that he recognized as being around the tables prior to the attack. It looked like they were even unguarded. He quietly walked over to them. As he drew nearer he realized that they were both gagged, and there were cuffs on both their hands and ankles threaded through the open back chairs. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

"Put your hands up!"

[-]

Meia boarded the captain's personal shuttle with Ranma. Paraila and Kusumoto's Dreads from her team had been able to be freed from the Paksis and make a manual launch down the Dread launch bay, and go on patrol. With all the Paksis corruption taking over their ship the automated launch and retrieval systems were offline.

They were headed back to the Ikazuchi's hangar. The two ships were apparently now connected on the inside, but for the moment it was still faster and safer to travel between hangars. According to Gascogne's report her, Jura's, Barnette's, and Dita's Dreads had all been engulfed by Paksis crystal, and they were effectively down to six Dreads. The Reg crews that weren't helping the Engineering crew try to get the ship back online, were busy trying to insure that those Dreads would remain flight worthy.

Meia looked up from her tablet and glanced over to see Ranma's eyes were closed, but she didn't appear to be asleep. Her Scope Dog had apparently also been engulfed in crystal, and couldn't be retrieved. It looked like they were both grounded for the moment.

[-]

Hibiki saw a group of what looked like important people walking towards them. There was a crone clothed in deep robes, a tall woman wearing very little with white hair, a woman in some kind of armored jacket with greyish green hair, some blue haired woman in a white pilot suit, and a red haired woman in a dark pilot suit that kind of looked like Lieutenant Commander Saotome. It had to be a coincidence, the Lieutenant Commander was a Man of Tarak.

"So these are all the men that were left onboard?" The crone asked the one in the armored jacket.

"At least they're all the ones that my crew was able to find." The one in the armored jacket responded.

"Well Lieutenant Commander what can you tell us about them?" The crone prompted, and Hibiki had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Was it possible that, that woman actually was the Lieutenant Commander somehow?

The "Lieutenant Commander" looked at the crone pointedly, and appeared to be studying her. "What do you intend to do with them?" There was an odd defensive edge to the question.

"Well that depends on you." The crone responded.

Things went quiet for a long moment. "He's a doctor." The "Lieutenant Commander" responded pointing at the long haired man they'd seated him with originally.

"I see, we could use a doctor. What about the other two?" The crone responded.

"A highly skilled mechanic, and I don't know who the blond is." How had she known that? Did the women have some kind of secret weapon that allowed them to turn men into women? Was that really Lieutenant Commander Saotome?

"Remove the gags." The crone ordered, who Hibiki was starting to get the impression was in charge. The "Lieutenant Commander" left walking towards the hangar, with the blue haired one following.

[-]

Meia caught up with Ranma when she stopped in front of the misshapen lump of crystal that had engulfed her Scope Dog. The redhead was resting a hand against the crystal while trying to gaze through the distorted mass at what lay underneath. She stopped next to Ranma and studied her for a few moments.

"I think you did the right thing." She offered.

"Of course you do, it benefits you." Was Ranma's cold response. "I betrayed them, and your Captain is going to use them as leverage."

[-]


	4. Chapter 4

[-]

Meia placed her hand on Ranma's shoulder, and gave it a slight squeeze. Ranma turned in her direction, studying her. Meia had the impression that she was trying to figure out what her intent was. She was tempted to try to call her attention to the fact she was actually a woman, and she was just siding with her own people. As worked up as Ranma was already though, she felt that wasn't advisable. She knew enough to recognize that Ranma wouldn't just wake up from whatever was holding her.

"For what its worth, you have my sympathy." Meia said, trying to be comforting.

Ranma's surprise was evident on her face, and she looked at her for a moment before closing her eyes. "It's appreciated, but we have a flight deck we need to get operational." Turning Ranma twisted out of her grip, and started walking over to a member of the Reg crew. Meia decided to let it go, for a moment she'd seen gratitude in Ranma's face. Ranma clearly didn't trust her, but trust was something that was built over time and Meia at least thought she could understand what Ranma's perspective on things was.

[-]

Hibiki saw the "Lieutenant Commander" leave the room they currently were in, followed by the blue haired woman. The crone had been talking with the guy that had tried to save them. Apparently he was Bart Garsus of the Garsus Food corporation, and the last several minutes had revolved around Bart trying to convince the crone he was useful based on his knowledge of Tarak food pellets. That had not been going well...

"So tell me young man, do you know anything about aquaponics?" The crone continued with her line of questioning.

"Sure, of course I do." Came Bart's unconvincing response.

"Oh, and what do you know about it?"

"Well it involves fish and plants, and it's used to produce food with very little wasted resources." Hibiki could see that Bart was reaching, and he didn't have any idea what this aquaplodics thing was.

"I thought that they just synthesized." Hibiki commented, his mouth getting the better of him again.

"No, it's based around a special recipe involving various food components which are stabilized giving them a long shelf life, and just the right balance of food components. Some of the lesser companies that use inferior components try to synthesize most of the vitamins, minerals, and proteins. Garsus Foods however recognizes that there are some things you can't synthesize quite right, and that's why our food pellets use high quality ingredients." Bart sounded like he was trying to sell something.

"I see, and what were you trained to do on this ship?" The crone asked, making it clear that she'd just been humoring Bart's attempts to... actually he wasn't quite sure what Bart had been attempting to do with all that talk about Garsus Foods.

"I'm a Helmsman." Bart proudly announced.

The crone nodded. "Good, you should be able to show me the way to the bridge then." She turned to the large woman in the armored jacket. "I'll let you decide whether you want the small one on your team or Parfet, Gascogne." He had a sneaking suspicion that she was referring to him.

"I'll take care of it, Captain." "Gascogne" responded.

The crone then turned to the tall woman with the long white hair. "BC, escort the doctor to the sick bay and make sure he actually takes care of our wounded. Feel free to shoot him if he tries anything."

Hibiki debated trying something as his bonds were released. He stared at the beam rifles being pointed at his face for a moment, and decided that maybe now wasn't a good time to try something.

[-]

"Who's this?" Asked a woman with glasses in an orange coveralls with glasses and what looked like some kind of antenna cluster on the side of her head. Her long hair was pulled back into a pair of weird structures.

"Gascogne,

"Hibiki Tokai." He responded, well aware of the pair of women in white tunics and pants with blue trim, that were behind his back pointing weapons at him. Apparently these rather then the ones with red stuff were the actual guards. "Are you a cyborg?" He asked. The fleshy parts looked too real for her to be a robot.

The woman tilted her head to head slightly. "What makes you ask that?"

Hibki tapped at his left ear, not wanting to tempt the guards behind him by pointing. "You have an antenna cluster on the side of your head." He explained.

The woman reached up and touched the sensor spike. "You mean this? It's an enhanced communicator. I work around a lot of equipment that produces signals that interfere with communication signals, so I need this to insure the captain can get in contact with me at any time."

"Why don't they need one too so their signal can get through to you?" Hibiki asked in response, intrigued.

"I'm not really communicating with their device. I'm communicating with the nearest communication node, which handles communications between us. So that's not necessary." She explained patiently, removing the antenna, and revealing it was a headset.

He nodded as he saw how that could work. At the moment he was liking this option better then the weird head fin women and their armored jacket wearing leader. This one seemed less likely to kill him, although maybe she was just trying to get him to drop his guard so she could more easily tear out his entrails. "I'm a mechanic."

"Well I'd have you grab a suit and help us, but right now it'd be a lot more useful if you could read that for me." She said pointing at a display. "I built a translator, but it got damaged when we warped." She paused and touched her chin thoughtfully. "I almost forgot, you can call me Parfet."

This didn't seem so bad.

[-]

Duero looked around the Ikuzuchi's secondary sick bay. He has seen it before during the tour of the ship they'd received over the past few days. Unlike the primary one it only had around fifty beds, a single surgical room, and some other accommodations that he hadn't been able to properly assess. The equipment however was notably better, having been from the colonization era, although a lot of it was in dire need of maintenance. Currently much of the room was engulfed in crystal, which seemed to be growing more and more.

"Wouldn't you rather use your ships facilities? It was my understanding that Mejere medical technology was very advanced." He asked trying to lead her into revealing some information about what the larger situation was.

His escort looked at him critically. "Most of our wounded are on this side. If there's something you can't handle, they can be transported to our ship." She responded in a measured fashion. She seemed to have caught on that he was trying to fish for information, and had deflected him not revealing meaningfully more information then he already knew.

He noted that most of the beds were already occupied and started going to work. It looked like it was mostly minor injuries that just required dressings.

[-]

Bart chuckled nervously as he realized that the Bridge had been part of the new section. He didn't have the slightest clue where the Bridge was in the old section, or if it even still had one after the renovations.

"Oh, do you not know where the bridge is?" The old woman asked, stopping.

"Of course I do." He bluffed.

The old woman touched one of the nearby door panels and it slid open to reveal a small room with a trio of control panels. "It's here."

Bart stared at stations that looked nothing like the ones he'd been trained on. He started to reach for them, but found his arm seized by a member of the security team that'd been following him around. He turned to find the old woman looking at him in disappointment. "It's clear you've never been in here, and don't know how to use this equipment. I'm afraid Bart, that I'm going to have to send you to the brig for now."

[-]

Bart stared in annoyance at the bars. The power was out, so they'd slid down and locked the shutter instead of using the forcefield. The dim glow of emergency lighting was the only thing keeping him from literally sitting here in the dark, crammed in a cell full of supplies. Why was he the only one in here?

Sure he had never really taken this whole joining the military thing that seriously. He had however put the effort in to learn how to be a helmsman and try to improve Garsus' sales. His father hadn't yelled at him when he'd come to his graduation, and he hadn't been in danger of being retired.

[-]

Dita looked at the redheaded woman suspiciously. The talk was that she was from Tarak, and thus an alien even though she looked like one of them. Maybe she was a shape changing alien? She'd read about those, apparently they were some kind of slime creatures that could form their bodies into different shapes to mimic different forms. Apparently the Captain had assigned the Leader to guard her, which was why the two of them were together. She was hoping that Meia would be okay.

"Hi, Miss Alien can I talk to you?"

The redhaired woman glanced at Meia. "Who is she?"

"Dita, she's one of my pilots. She just got out of training, so I'm keeping her off the flight schedule until we get the Paksis under control." Meia responded.

"I see." The woman walked over to her and extended a hand. "We'll be working together."

Dita grabbed the woman's hand and shook it. "I'm Dita, it's nice to meet you."

"You may call me Ranma." Miss Alien pulled her hand away after the first shake. Maybe she was trying to hide some imperfection in her disguise? "Is one of these yours?" She asked gesturing at the blobs of crystal on the deck.

"Yes, that one." She said pointing enthusiastically.

"What color is it?"

"Blue."

"I see."

"Miss Alien, can you tell me about your planet?" Dita asked.

"You a Roider, Orbiter, or Domer?" Came Miss Alien's response.

"Domer, but our unit was destroyed and I became an Orbiter refugee." Dita responded.

"How could a dome on Mejere be destroyed?"

Meia, who had been standing nearby, explained. "It was condemned."

Miss Alien turned to Meia, and focused all of her attention on Meia. Dita looked on in annoyance, before deciding to go look for Mister Alien.

[-]

Meia tried to explain what had happened, while leaving her family's involvement out of it. About how there'd been a plan to terraform Mejere, trying to turn their barren ice world into a lush paradise. About how things had fallen through and the dome of scientists, engineers, and their families that had supported the project had been ordered to be relocated offworld. Through it all Ranma listened to her patiently.

"At least you have some closure." Ranma responded, her expression having softened. "The orbiter I was produced on was destroyed, but I didn't find out until much later." Meia noted that Ranma left off an accusation as to who was responsible, and she seemed to be trying to reach out to her.

"So you have no place to go either." Meia noted.

"I have my duty and my honor, even if I've been forced to sully both. I'm not ready to be retired yet." Ranma responded.

"What do you mean by that?" Meia asked, something about the tone Ranma had used was different from what she'd expect.

"Mean by what?" Ranma asked in response, looking at her skeptically.

"Retired." Meia clarified.

Ranma looked at her moment and then shook her head. "When we're no longer able to perform our function, we're retired so that we don't place an undue burden on those who still can. They give you a nice ceremony where the services you've rendered are recognized, and you're retired." She responded like it was simply what was expected, and something was wrong with her to even ask. Meia started putting the subtext together, and didn't like where it pointed.

"They kill you?!" She demanded, in what was a rare outburst for her.

Ranma tilted her head to the side and looked at her like something was wrong with her. "We all die eventually. Why would you want to burden others when you can no longer serve your function?" It was stated simply and logically, like it was the only rational course.

"Don't take death so lightly!" Meia objected. Ranma looked at her for a moment and glanced down. Meia followed her look and realized that she'd grabbed Ranma's arm. She didn't let go, and instead met Ranma's gaze. They stared at each other for what seemed like a long moment, and then Ranma's expression softened slightly.

"So you value my life?" Ranma asked.

"Yes." Meia responded, she could see Ranma was touched by the slight changes in her body language and expression. Her thoughts were cut short as she heard the sound of something shattering.

She turned to see the crystal cocoon around her Dread crack and fracture, turning int a cloud of slow moving fragments. Part of the Reg crew quickly moved in and started vacuuming up the crystal fragments. A few moments later the air was clear enough that it was safe to approach.

It looked different. The lines of the modular central Dread chassis were no longer present. "That's my Dread?"

She was trying to make sense of it it when Ranma jumped off the deck towards what looked like the cockpit, pulling her along with. "We might as well check it out."

Ranma without hesitation reached for the cockpit release control, and opened it. After having spent the last month training rookies and have them struggle with that, the casual way Ranma had done it immediately caught her attention. She intentionally gave Ranma a little room to see what she'd do. Ranma calmly slid next to the cockpit, and without hesitation reached for where the system start controls were on a normal Dread. The consoles came on, and Ranma started running a diagnostic.

"You've piloted a Dread before." She noted.

She noticed Ranma stiffen. "I've used a simulator a few times." She responded trying to brush it off.

Meia smiled, it looked like she was right, Ranma was a captured Mejere ace. Some time in the cockpit would do her a lot of good. She pointed at the Reg crew that was already moving equipment into position to get her Dread up and operational. "We're going to take this for a test flight so get it ready for launch."

[-]

Dita found Mister Alien working with Parfet's crew in the observation deck to the Paksis reactor. The two of them were talking. Dita made a point to put herself between them as she got Mister Alien's attention. "Hi, Mister Alien. What are you doing?"

"What? What is she doing here?" Mister Alien responded. He didn't look happy to see her for some reason.

"Hey there, Dita. Did Meia ask you to help us out?" Parfet asked, who didn't seem at all disturbed by her presence and was her normal friendly self. Dita knew better then to yell at her.

"Uh... Sure. My Dread is encased in crystal, and we're understaffed so I wanted to see if I could help out." She half lied. The Captain had made it clear that everyone should help out where they could, and she was grounded with her Dread was currently buried in crystal. So there was no reason she shouldn't be able to help out Parfet and hang out with Mister Alien instead of staying on stand by while the Reg crew tried to free her Dread.

"Okay, get into your assault suit and help the crews with getting the starlight particles in the reactor chamber. Make certain to check that the assault suit's shielding is operational and intact."

"Yes. Ma'am." Dita responded while mentally grumbling.

[-]

"According to the reports, the ship's sections are being rearranged. Sections are disappearing and reappearing elsewhere, sometimes changed. So far we've managed to avoid taking any casualties due to this, but the crew is on edge." BC summarized.

Magno nodded. "That's understandable. Does Parfet have any opinions on when it'll sort itself out?"

"She thinks it will be at least a few hours. The nature of the process however makes it just an educated guess based on trends." BC clarified. "The Shimakaze and Ikazuchi are now connected internally and some temporary elevators have been rigged up allow safe transport of equipment."

"What would you rate as out most pressing problem currently, BC?" Magno asked confident her in her second in command's ability to assess the situation.

"Life support is stable, but most of the more sophisticated systems including medical services are currently offline and we're operating off the emergency power reserves. It's not as simple as prioritizing repair of a particular system. Parfet's crews are working on getting the critical systems back online. We're not in danger of running out of power for a few days at the current consumption rates, so I'm having Parfet prioritize at her own discretion."

Magno nodded. It was a good call. "The girl has her quirks but she'll either blow us up, or figure out how to get us sorted out from this mess."

[-]

"I'll take the weapon officer's station." Ranma declared slipping into the backseat, as the Reg crew signaled that they were ready to launch. Meia debated whether she should insist on Ranma taking the front seat, but decided she was pushing enough already. The way the Dread controls were laid out, it wasn't like she couldn't given Ranma a chance to put the Dread through its strides. The backseat didn't have an ideal view for piloting, but the multifunction displays allowed instrument flying in a pinch.

Ranma reached out her hand. Recognizing the gesture Meia reached out and shook her hand with a firm grip, before sliding into the pilot's seat. She gently warmed up the engines. "Looks like we're going to need to keep output under 80% until the ground crews can give it a proper overhaul." She noted. According to her readings most of the damage had been repaired. She wasn't sure whether the systems still reading as having problems were the result of lingering damage or lingering Paksis corruption.

"Everything checks out on my end. The hangar entrance has been cleared." Ranma responded from behind her.

Seeing confirmation that they were cleared to launch Meia gently worked the controls lifting her Dread off the deck and moving it out with a minimum of thrust in order to keep the rick of incinerating the crews to a minimum. In a few minutes they edged past the containment field, and with a gentle turn to insure her thrusters were not pointed at the ship, Meia brought the main engines online.

She quickly adjusted the acceleration compensator setting as she was slammed back into her seat from the acceleration. Either the thrust ratio was a lot higher, or there was a malfunction in the compensator. She started to run a diagnostic only to find the results waiting on one of her screens with a note from Ranma that everything checked out.

"Thanks." She verbally responded back, as it occurred to her that they were all alone out here.

"You say that like you aren't used to having a wiz backing you up." Ranma responded.

"I'm not." She responded. "We don't have enough people."

"I think I can understand, but why would you be running low on pilots and trained personnel? Mejere has been getting the better of engagements for awhile, and you shouldn't be running out of resources to train." Ranma asked, clearly surprised.

Meia went ahead and switched one of her side monitors to a visual communication channel. Ranma had her helmet on, and had checked her spacesuit seals, just like she had. She could see Ranma's face through her face plate even if it was obscured. She pulled the Dread through a tight loop testing that the acceleration compensators were working. The responsiveness was incredible even though she wasn't pushing it what it could do. "We're pirates, we don't have enough recruits."

"Why not produce more?"

Here came the part where she knew she was either going to really regret or appreciate the fact they were both trapped in the same cockpit right now. "Mejere doesn't use factory production. An Ohma and a Fama produce a child together, and the child can choose what they want to be."

She could see that Ranma's response that she was puzzled. "I see." Meia thought Ranma was going to leave it at that, but after a moment she spoke up again. "That seems rather inefficient. Why would you want to make the function of part of your population producing children when you can do it with machines?"

"Maybe it is, but it's not about efficiency." Meia was disappointed. She had hoped to get more out of that, but she didn't seem to be getting through. Ranma had remembered how to use a Dread though.

Ranma seemed to be focusing on something else, and after a moment Meia realized that Ranma was operating her console. "We have an unidentified contact. Highlighting and projecting intercept course."

Meia decided to let things go, be as she shifted focus to intercepting the unidentified contact. With this Dread it was easy to setup the intercept, and they were quickly within visual range of the object in question. It was a small bulbous thing with large optics and no obvious means of propulsion. She was careful to approach it so as to limit its ability to detect her.

"Probe?" She asked, looking for Ranma to confirm or contradict her assessment.

"That's what it looks like. Configuration doesn't match any known patterns. I'd suggest retrieving it, disabling it communication systems, and using an isolated system to analyze it. Whatever sent this thing out here is probably still prowling around." Ranma responded.

"In any evidence of a high yield explosive device?" Meia asked, as she rolled Ranma's suggestion over in her head.

"Not that this Dread's sensors can detect. No evidence of a jamming field, or sensor blocking materials being used. If they are doing something along those lines it's very sophisticated. What do you want to do?"

"Neither of our pilot suits are really intended for EVA duty so we'll take up station, and have Gascogne's team handle retrieval." Meia concluded.

"Understood." Ranma went ahead and opened a tight beam communications channel with the Shimakaze for her.

[-]

Receiving Transmission...

Processing...

Probe compromised.

Processing...

Transmitting Data...

Changing mission parameters to Attack.

Preparing fighters for launch.

[-]

Gascogne carefully directed her crews to carefully retrieve the probe. They'd already covered the antenna cluster in a special foam that would prevent it from transmitting or receiving transmissions. Once her crews did a few more checks for any explosives they'd be ready to reel it in, and move it to the ordinance disposal chamber.

Gascogne's console beeped. Looking over at the readout Gascogne's blood ran cold. She keyed up the communications gear. "We've got Bandits inbound. Prepare for full deck launch, ladies." They were going to need every Dread they could scramble.

[-]

"Report to battle stations. This is not a drill, we have at least twenty contacts inbound. Repeat. Report to battle stations at once, this is not a drill." Belvedere's voice declared over the intercom.

Dita looked up from where she'd been helping Parfet's crew, and considered what to do. On one hand she was currently helping Parfet get the ship back online. On the other hand she wasn't really part of Parfet's team. She was part of Meia's and her battle station was with her Dread even though it was grounded, given her orders had been to stay on standby next to her Dread. But what about Mister Alien?

"Hibiki Tokai, you are to report to the Ikazuchi's launch deck immediately." The Commander's voice broke in to Belvedere's call to battle stations.

That was where her Dread was. Dita decided that she'd report to the Ikazuchi's launch deck too.

[-]

Hibiki rolled his eyes as he was escorted back to the Ikazuchi's launch deck. What were they trying to pull? He wasn't a pilot and he had seen for himself that his partner had been engulfed in crystal. Given the women couldn't even get their own fighters free, what were they expecting him to do? At least with Parfet's crew he'd been doing something useful, and even if she was a women Parfet hadn't treated him as just another cog in the machine that should keep his head down and know his place. That'd been a nice change of pace after all the time he'd spent in the factories.

The Alien girl was following him again, but the pair of security personnel escorting him apparently were warding her off from doing anything. The security team seemed to really just be focused on escorting him. They weren't interested in talking to him, and that suited him just fine.

[-]

Meia looked at the graphic that Ranma had setup for her, on her right side display. The inbound force was flying in a loose formation. At the core was a flight of what Ranma had subbed Bombers. Taking point, and currently vector towards them were two flights of what Ranma had dubbed Spiculums. Two flights of what Ranma had dubbed Block fighters were staying in formation around the Bombers.

Miyuki and Noa were currently forming up with Natsume and Aer. She had ordered them to guard the Shimakaze, and insure that nothing got through. Paraila and Kusumoto were on their way back out to reinforce them. The odds weren't looking good.

"I think we'll have the best success if we do slashing attacks on the Spiculums. Based on the readings we have a significant enough acceleration advantage to pull it off. If we can pull the Spiculums away then at least they'll have a chance." Ranma commented from behind her.

Meia went cold as she considered the ramifications. "How many missiles do we have?"

"Eight."

"We're going to punch straight through. Dual link the missiles, and target the bombers." Meia gripped the controls a little too tightly. She saw the targeting solutions queuing up on her left side display. She noticed that Ranma was adjusting the targeting to be more precise as they got closer and the sensors could pick up more detail.

"Not going to say something about this being suicidal?" Meia asked in response to Ranma's silence.

"We have a job to do. Focus on doing it right." Ranma responded with an edge in her voice.

Meia resisted the urge to glance back at her. Meia opened up the throttle as the Spiculum formation began to close. She warmed up the boosters, and setup a programmed trigger. As the sensors detected the Spiculum's weapon systems powering up, the boosters activated causing them to overshoot.

Then they were past them, and following one of the flight paths that Ranma had plotted to their goal.

[-]

As Habiki entered the Vanguard deck, he stopped. Was that his partner? There was a yellow Vanguard that didn't resemble any model he'd ever heard of lying on the deck, and even from here he could see the symbol he'd carved into it. Other then retaining a human form, it bore no resemblance to the Tsukumo type Vanguard he'd originally intended to swipe, and show the guys back at the factory. The woman with the armored coat was standing near the machine, looking it over. A prod in his back with a beam rifle got him moving again, and he rushed over to the machine.

"It looks like the Paksis transformed this machine too. Think you can still pilot it?" The armored coat wearing woman noted as he approached.

"Hey, I'm Hibiki Tokai." He responded to her challenge confidently, and quickly tried to cover the fact he didn't have the first idea what to do as he looked the machine over. He found a panel covering what looked like a hatch release lever on the side of the cockpit, close to where it had been on the Tsukumo-types. He confidently looked at the woman as the hatch opened. "See it's simple."

"So can you operate it then, mister mechanic?"

"Of course I can." He responded confidently to her challenge, and hopped into the seat. He looked over the completely unfamiliar controls, and decided to see if the starter switch was where it'd been on the Tsukumo-types he had helped get operational. He located something that seemed similar, and the monitors came on. He paid attention the read outs trying to translate the technical jargon into something that'd help him with the task of moving the robot. He reached over to where the hatch close controls had been on the Tsukumo-type and finding a similar control toggled it, causing the hatch to close.

Now to figure out how to get this thing to move.

[-]

Meia's eyes darted across sensor readouts. The good news was that they'd managed to to take down three of the bombers, and seriously damage the fourth. The bad news was that everything else was filling the space around them with weapons fire, and it was all she could do to keep ahead of it.

She felt the ship shift, and in her peripheral visions saw an energy beam pass through where they'd been. A very quick glance revealed that Ranma's controls were also in pilot mode, and had been in pilot mode. It was kind of comforting, but she didn't have the time to think about that right now. She needed to keep alive and setup another pass.

[-]

Magno looked at the tactical readout. Part of Parfet's crew had rigged up an improvised solution, so she could at least have an idea what was going on. Meia had eliminated the primary threat, but now was getting swamped by odds she couldn't hope to win against. She had ordered everything that could fly sent to help her. They already had six Dreads vectoring towards her, and apparently a single Vanguard.

A Dread contact of unknown configuration appeared following the Vanguard. Well at least they weren't outnumbered two to one anymore.

[-]

Meia winced as a beam weapon landed a glancing hit. She didn't have time to look at the readouts, as the Dread was pulled in another hard maneuver, but she could feel that they were losing thrust.

[-]

Hibiki was still getting a feel for the controls, when something in the cockpit started beeping. Puzzled he looked around for the source, his eyes locked on the main display and the words "Collision Alert" flashing in large red letters. After the implication of those words sunk in he quickly scrambled for some means to correct the situation. Where were the thrust controls again?

Hibiki closed his eyes trying to block out a bright light, and felt something wiggling around on his lap. He blinked the spots out of his eyes to find the alien girl was sitting in his lap. He quickly pushed her to the side and out of his lap. She'd done something, somehow. He needed to get out of here!

"Oh, Mister Alien." The demon stated. Hibiki tried to move in the opposite direction, but quickly realized that while wherever they were was larger then his Partner's cockpit, it wasn't that much larger. The alien girl tackled from behind on the third time around the cockpit, when his leg got caught on the pilot seat. His hand landed on one of the spheres that was like those that had been in his Partner.

[-]

Magno stared as about half of the enemy contacts disappeared from the screen. "BC, what just happened?"

Buzam quickly started making the proper calls to find out as Magno turned her attention back to the screen. She did a quick count. If there wasn't a sensor malfunction then they now had the numerical advantage, and the Dreads should be closing to attack range shortly. The enemy however appeared to have lost their will to fight and were turning away.

"Captain, apparently the Vanguard and Dita's Dread merged, and they fired a massive energy beam." Buzam reported.

Well this was an interesting development.

[-]

Hibiki felt drained. On the upside, he was back in his Partner's cockpit, somehow. He wasn't going to argue with his good fortune. Just as he started trying to figure out the controls to get his Vanguard moving again in the direction of the enemy, a window opened on his monitor and some woman was ordering everyone back to base.

[-]

Meia carefully flew the Dread back into the Ikazuchi's launch deck, feeling Ranma shadowing the controls. After a few tense moments they made contact with the deck, and Meia shutdown the engines. Unbuckling her harness, she turned around and found Ranma looking at her intently. Noticing her attention Ranma's expression turned apologetic.

"You did good out there." Ranma said offering her hand.

"You did well yourself." Meia noted, turning back and grabbing Ranma's hand. She felt something hard pressing against the palm of her hand, and a quick glance confirmed that her laser ring wasn't currently on her finger. "Why?" She asked calmly.

"Why I took it, or why I'm giving it back?" Ranma asked in response. Meia could see she was guarded and decided not to push her.

"I think I can put it together. Are we good?" Meia asked, and Ranma nodded in response. "Thank you." She added.

She could see that her thanks had caught Ranma off guard, and that Ranma was starting to warm up to her. She was honest with herself to recognize that she was feeling drawn to the redheaded woman, especially after that harrowing flight. It was different from when she had ended up joining that butch gang in the unit she'd been evacuated to before Magno had found her. She had proven she was capable, and Sayaka had taken an interest in her. She'd made the mistake of showing weakness after they'd started to get close, and Sayaka had throw her away and had her removed from the gang for being weak. Magno had found her shortly after that, before she had the chance to crawl into the arms of someone else.

That seemed like a long time ago now. She'd had a chance to prove herself, receive recognition, and be herself. Maybe she could make this work, and maybe this time they'd be able to be comfortable in each others arms. Meia realized she was letting her imagination run away with her feelings again.

"Don't get the wrong idea. We're allies of convenience." Ranma toggled the cockpit open from her set of controls, and climbed out kicking off to the deck. Meia reached up to her chest, before quickly returning it to its normal position and jumping out after her.

[-]

Author's Notes:

The Harvesters really didn't have a reason to have organic ships in series, and given that craze has run it's course it seems more thematically appropriate to go more mechanical and robotic with their design.

The Spiculums are based on the fighters from the episode where Meia has her flashback. The Block fighter are based on the craft from the episode where Rabat is introduced. The Bombers are basically bigger versions of that. The Cube types still exist but are part of ther boarding assets, as they're a little too silly as a star fighter. Detail on them should be next chapter when they're analyzing the data.


	5. Chapter 5

[-]

Hibiki looked over the cell that he had been escorted to. It had a fold down bunk, a toilet, and at least it looked reasonably clean. It was also very clearly part of the Ikazuchi. A prod at his back encouraged him into the cell, and energy bars materialized behind him.

A touch on one of the control things the security team was carrying released the tension in the cuffs that bound his arms behind him. Hibiki slipped them off, and watched the security team leave. He quickly located a control panel that allowed him to adjust the lights. He debated spending some time making some modifications to the cuffs, but after the initial thrill of the possibilities wore off he admitted to himself that overpowering the guards and taking back the ship wasn't going to happen.

Defeated he turned off the lights, and went to bed.

[-]

Meia looked over at Ranma as she pulled the mattress off her bunk, and moved it to a corner on the side of the room that had the door. "What are you doing?" She asked.

"Giving myself an extra advantage, if someone tries a reprisal raid." Ranma responded.

Meia decided to help her. She thought the whole thing was unnecessary, but could see where Ranma was coming from. In a few minutes Ranma's bunk was made. Ranma sat down on it and looked at her. "Thanks."

Meia sat down next to her. Ranma looked at her questioningly but withheld comment. "I wanted to thank you for you help out there."

Ranma scoffed. "Your gratitude isn't necessary."

Undeterred Meia quickly snaked an arm around Ranma's waist and pulled her to her. Ranma looked at her in puzzlement as Meia pulled Ranma's warm body against her own. "You're acting like a kid." Ranma commented. "You shouldn't need me to comfort you."

"I'm not looking for that type of comfort." She responded as she started to lean in, only to freeze as the tones of someone ringing the doorbell rang. Part of her debated just letting it ring, but she had her duty. Ranma looked at her in puzzlement, and let her go as she started to pull away. Meia realized that Ranma had, had no clue what she'd been trying to do.

She felt kind of guilty as she walked over to the door. Was she taking advantage of whatever Tarak had done to Ranma?

"Am I interrupting?" Jura asked as soon as the door slid open, Barnette as usual was at her shoulder.

"We were just settling in. Did you need something, Jura?" Remaining calm, she used her tone to convey her desire for Jura to go away.

"I heard that you were sharing quarters with the Red Shoulder. Can I talk to her?" Jura asked.

"What do you want to talk about?" Ranma asked coldly from behind her shoulder. Based on the tone Meia had no doubt Ranma's expression had hardened again.

"You don't need to have that kind of attitude." Jura responded dismissively. "I was only trying to be friendly, and come greet you." Jura added, trying to cast herself as the reasonable one who was being unfairly persecuted. Meia wasn't impressed. Why couldn't they just be straightforward?

Ranma crossed her arms over her chest and just stared Jura down. "Who are you?" She asked bluntly, with a slight edge to her voice.

Meia could see Jura was taken back. Meia had a sneaking suspicion Jura was trying to figure out some way she could effectively hide behind Barnette, and get her to bail her out without being obvious. Meia decided to step in after giving Jura a chance to speak for herself. "These two disobeyed my orders, and tried to shoot you down instead of focusing on their mission. Jura pilots a red Dread, and Barnette pilots a purple one. You remember them?"

Ranma moved past her, and looked intently at the pair studying them. "Am I correct in my understanding that Meia is your superior?" She asked calmly.

"Yes." Barnette replied, with a hint of fear tinging her voice.

"I look forward to practicing combat drills with you two." Ranma said with a smile that promised they wouldn't be enjoying the combat drills. "You may refer to me as Lieutenant Commander Saotome."

Barnette took the hint and escorted Jura away, leading to Ranma toggling the door as she walked back in. Meia found Ranma looking at her intently. "What were you trying to do before they showed up?" She asked crossing her arms over her chest, and giving her the same kind of stare down that she had given Jura.

Meia kept her composure, and decided to just be straightforward and honest. "I was trying to kiss you."

Ranma tilted her head slightly to the side. "But you've already greeted me." She stated, clearly puzzled. Meia could only assume she was thinking about greeting customs based on kissing someone on the cheek.

"It's something a little different." Meia explained. "I enjoy your company, and would like to get closer to you."

Ranma rubbed her face. "Meia." Ranma drew her name out a little bit, her tone gently chagrining her. "We're enemies. I'm the prisoner of war, and you're the guard. It's my duty to escape, and your duty to stop me. If you start talking like that Magno is going to make someone else be my guard."

"Ranma look at yourself, we're not enemies." Ranma looked down, and between them for a few moments.

"I'm not one of you." Ranma responded, turning away. "Even if I was, your people destroyed everything I cared about and I've personally killed enough of your people their grudge is justified."

Meia watched Ranma walk over to her bunk, and sitting down on it, picked up her laptop and started working. Picking up her tablet Meia sat down next to Ranma. Ranma glanced over at her with an indulgent look, but chose not to comment and went back to work.

[-]

Meia found the Ranma was still sleeping when she got up. She went over to check on the woman, and found that she appeared to be relaxed and content with a smile on her face. As Meia drew near Ranma's eyes opened and locked on to her, and Ranma's face adopted a neutral expression.

"Can I help you?" Ranma's tone was guarded, and it didn't pass Meia's notice that one of Ranma's hands was slipped under her pillow.

"I wanted to let you know that we'll be having breakfast shortly." Meia let her know.

"We making it together?" Ranma asked. When they'd went to get dinner she'd made it clear that they'd prepare and eat the same food, or she'd stick with her sealed rations. Last night she had followed through on sticking to her sealed rations, as they'd both been too tired to make something.

"Yes." At the very least it'd be a good opportunity to spend some time together.

[-]

Ranma quietly stood beside her slicing vegetables as they prepared food in one of the self serve kitchens that the Shimakaze was equipped with. Most people ate at one of the fully automated kitchens as it was not only convenient but better usually better prepared. The social gestures of cooking for others, and joys of cooking for each other however were well established in Mejere culture. It was kind of nice, she'd not really done this with anyone before.

"I'm surprised you're so good with preparing food." Meia tried to compliment Ranma. She was amazingly good at cutting up vegetables to the point Meia suspected Ranma was better than her at it. Meia however had to admit that she'd never spent that much time honing her cooking skills. She'd never fancied herself a Fama, not that her Fama had really fit the old stereotype. It was better not to think about her parents.

"When I was younger the aquaponic systems had sufficient capacity that they had us prepare food as part of our normal duty rotations. The food pellets came later as rationing came into play and food needed to be regulated as the war went into full swing." Was Ranma's quiet response.

Meia wasn't sure how to respond to that, but tried to get the conversation back on track. "I'm surprised how fast you are." Meia tried again with a genuine compliment.

Ranma glanced at her and smiled slightly. "When you need to prepare food for the rest of the academy, you make a point to learn and share the tricks that speed things up, so you actually have time to do the other things you need to do."

Meia started pulling things together in the skillet following the recipe off one of the conveniently placed monitors. The base was diced potatoes which combined with several vegetables included peppers and onions, and some spices was supposed to be pretty good. Ranma done with preparing the vegetables, moved to grilling the pair of small fish that would provide the meat. Meia glanced over and noticed Ranma was smiling contentedly as she cooked.

"You like cooking?" Meia asked, trying again to start up a conversation.

"It reminds me of better times." Ranma responded with a smile. Meia decided to enjoy the smile, rather than worry about the implications of that statement. Ranma was willing to make breakfast with her, and even Ranma wasn't necessarily enjoying her company she was enjoying doing it with her.

Her train of thought was broken as she was bumped from the side. "You were zoning out. Don't let the vegetables burn." Ranma followed up with a verbal jab, but in a playful tone.

Meia blinked at a loss for a moment. She decided to try to turn the jab back on Ranma. "You'd better not burn the fish."

Ranma smiled at her in challenge. "Don't worry I won't."

Silence returned as they finished up their respective parts of the meal, and Meia found she was comfortable with that. Soon enough the food was ready, and it was portioned out and served.

"The vegetables came out good." Ranma noted from her side of the table, with a slight air of surprise that made Meia suspect she would have has no problems with expressing her opinion if she thought they weren't good.

Meia decided to try the fish, and found is rather bland, like Ranma hadn't used any spices. "Not to your liking?" Ranma asked inquisitively, appearing to not be taking offense to her cooking not being seen as satisfactory.

Meia decided to try to just be honest with her as a result. "It's kind of bland, did you use any spices?"

"Just some salt to bring out the natural flavor. What do you use?"

Meia debated the various options, and went into the spice rack and pulled out the paprika. As she did so she was reminded that the herbs and spices they had on board were largely things that they had, had to be regularly supplied with from the agricultural orbitals. Except for the rare herb that someone might be growing in their garden for personal use, the dried supplies they had on hand were it.

She lightly sprinkled the paprika on her fish, and Ranma's as she extended her plate. Taking a bite Ranma nodded. "That's pretty good."

Meia found herself sharing Ranma's smile. "Ranma can I ask you something?"

"Shoot." Came the immediate reply.

"Why don't you seem to hate me?"

Ranma looked at her inquisitively. "Don't get the wrong idea. We're enemies, but for the moment we need to work together. Hating you is a waste of energy. Besides if I'm friendly you're less likely to see it coming when our temporary truce finally breaks." Ranma said the last bit playfully with a challenging smile, and Meia wasn't sure if she was being serious or not. After a moment she decided to try calling Ranma on it.

"You're not like that." Meia stated confidently, and was rewarded by Ranma looking at her startled. Ranma's eyes drifted down to studying the table and then to focusing on quietly eating her meal.

[-]

"So how do things currently stand, BC?" Magno asked from her position at the conference table.

"There's some reports that indicate that there's still some room reconfiguration going on, but for the most part things seem to have stabilized. The Shimakaze and Ikazuchi's Paksis reactor cores appear to have merged into a new central section that could be described as the core of the ship. Parfet's crews have restored secondary power, and partially restore primary power. Helm control however is still offline, and none of the consoles on the new bridge appear to control it."

"It appears the Paksis has been refurbishing the ship somehow." Parfet commented from her hovering communications window. "When we boarded the Ikazuchi our initial findings pointed to Tarak not refurbishing the Ikazuchi, and that elements of the original systems had fallen into a state of disrepair. My conclusion was that they were unable to repair the existing systems, and so instead built a new ship around the Ikazuchi, effectively using it as reactor core. I'm not sure I'd call it factory new, but now many of those systems are checking out once the Paksis crystal breaks off. I've never heard of a case like this."

"So what do you think is going on with helm control then?" Magno asked.

"Maybe the Paksis isn't done refurbishing the related systems yet?" Parfet responded. "There's nothing like this in the records, so I can only speculate on what's going on."

"What about you Gascogne?" Magno asked, turning towards the armored jacket wearing woman in charge maintenance, support, and armament of the Dreads that had been their primary offensive asset.

"We've got the Dread launch systems back online. Barnette and Jura's Dreads are still encased in crystal, but I expect they'll hatch soon enough. My teams have located eight Tsukumo-type Vanguards in various states of disrepair. If we can get them into service we'll have 10 Vanguards and 16 Dreads to play with. That should give us numerical superiority over a strike force like what just tried to hit us.

In the short term our biggest problem is that we only have eleven experienced pilots, and we don't have enough pilots of any stripe to pilot all that. In the long term, while the Ikazuchi's fabrication systems significantly improve our fabrication capacity we're not equipped to sustain combat operations.

I think it's best to go ahead and hand things off to Meia."

Meia nodded. "According to our reports the Ikazuchi has sixteen Tsukumo type simulators onboard, in addition to the twenty Dread simulators on the Shimakaze. We've begun developing programs based on the data we've collected about enemy forces, and will be adding that to the training regimen.

At this point we've encountered two types of enemy fighters, and what we assume to be a class of bomber. Gascogne's teams are still examining the wreckage, but we have enough battle data to have a reasonable idea of what these things can do and what we're looking at." Meia reached over and worked the conference table's holographic projector controls. A 3D model materialized and began rotating as it hovered over the conference table. The craft looked kind of like a mechanical flower. Its construction however was blocky with severe angles.

"As you can seem the main fuselage seems to be built around a reactor and a single spinal energy weapon with the targeting sensors clustered around the front. The struts emerging from the rear of the central fuselage appear to be 90 degrees from each other. Each of these struts has an engine on the end that were observed to have the ability to both vector and reverse thrust. These things are faster and more agile than our Dreads, and appear to be designed for use as interceptors. For the moment we've dubbed them Spiculums."

Ranma stood up. "The good news is that these things have only the barest nod at armor or shielding so they go down easy. The bad news is that they're small, nimble, and hard to hit. Based on the statistics you've gathered on your pilots, I suggest high performance missiles be used to counter these fighters."

Meia worked the controls again and a different ship came into view. This one looked like a thick square. One of the edges housed targeting sensor cluster, and opposite to it was was was clearly a pair of large engine nozzles. Slung underneath was a pair of large beam cannons.

"We've dubbed this the Block fighter. It has relatively thick armor for a fighter, with high power shields and beam cannons. The wings house missile launchers that are under armor."

Ranma took over. "These are heavy escort fighters. They're designed with recognition that you have to come to them. They can quickly reorient, which because you have to come to them, compensates for them being slow and not very maneuverable. They're going to try to force you to play chicken with them, and that's a fight they're built to win.

I'd suggest concentrated fire or heavy beam cannon equipped Dreads to counter these. They're not hard to counter, but they represent a threat that's best countered while having superior numbers."

Meia worked the console. The "Block fighter" shrunk as a very similar ship appeared hovering above it. "This was the bomber they used in the last attack. They appear to a turret on the top and bottom, and as you can see carry a pair of large torpedoes. Gascogne's crew was able to retrieve a relatively intact one of these, and we discovered that in the last attack they were carrying some kind of boarding torpedo loaded with hover drones. They haven't finished analyzing these yet, but the weapons they were equipped with appear to be non-lethal."

"So whoever sent these wanted to take us alive. So all of these were automated machines?" Magno asked, adjusting her grip slightly on her staff.

"Yes." Gascogne responded. "None of the recovered debris points to the existence of a cockpit, and there's no evidence of the sensor transmissions that would be required for remote operation. These things appear to be fully autonomous machine weapons."

Magno nodded. "I see." She turned towards Ranma. "Well Lieutenant Commander, you seem to have a good grasp on things. What do you think our next step should be?"

"Restoring main engines and helm control should be our top priority right now. That enemy carrier is still shadowing us, and as long as we're just drifting it's going to be easy for them to track us." Ranma responded

"Agreed." Parfet commented from her hovering window.

"Strategically it's best that we avoid combat whenever possible, and make an effort to obtain weapon grade materials. Food, fuel, and propellant aren't major concerns thanks the facilities on board. Our main problem is going to be preventing the supplies of advanced weaponry from drying up. The only way I see us surviving this is if we can trade advanced weaponry for minimal casualties. Even if this is the last we see of this particular group, there will be future threats."

[-]

Ranma shivered as Meia touched her arm. Everyone else had already cleared out of the conference room, returning to their duties. "Did you do this to me?" Ranma asked quietly.

Meia hugged her from behind. "They say these things just happen." Meia noted, feeling like doting on the redhead. Ranma had quickly moved into pulling her own weight, and the closest thing to complaining out of her had been the occasional lecture about how she was a prisoner of war and they were enemies under a temporary truce.

"You haven't had the chance to slip me a drug, and that wouldn't adequately explain this weird reaction my body is having to you." Meia's heart raced a little bit, as Ranma's statement confirmed what she'd suspected. Ranma was developing feelings for her.

"On Mejere this is normal." Meia observed.

"So you have these kind of feelings too then." Ranma relaxed slightly in her arms. "That's comforting. I don't have to worry so much about you using this to your advantage, because I can turn it on you." Ranma pulled away from her. "Thank you for that bit of information." She said slyly as she left the room.

Meia blinked, that hadn't been the reaction she was going for.

[-]

Magno hummed as she sat in her chair on the new bridge. It was a rather nice and comfortable chair, and it even had a motorized track that took it to the conference room behind the bridge. She was actually starting to like it better than her old one on the Shimakaze. That reminded her, they'd need to come up with a new name. While referring to each ship separately as the Ikazuchi and Shimakaze had served its purpose, they were now no longer two distinct ships in any meaningful sense. It was time to come up with a new name.

Magno quickly processed over a number of requests for changing quarters using a few applications that greatly eased the semi-routine task. There was always someone deciding they wanted to room with someone else, move somewhere else for different scenery, or suddenly decided they wanted to have a room to themselves for awhile. With all the shifting around the number of requests was much larger than usual. She had went with a base price for the moment, given the ship had just begun to stabilize, and there was no telling which quarters would become particularly popular when their ship now had over three times the volume.

A little note popped up reminding her that she'd left that helmsman in the brig, and should send someone to feed him. She looked out over her new bridge, and decided that perhaps she'd give him a second chance. What harm could come of it?

[-]

It had taken some encouragement, but Meia had gotten Ranma to go with her to the ship's arboretum which doubled as a kind of decorative garden. There had been accommodations in the quarters on the Shimakaze for personal garden using standardized boxes, and conduits for those who wanted to grow decorative plants or food for personal use. The bridge was currently suspended above them with the viewports giving a good view of the stars from even down here, and a burbling brook crossed through the arboretum. She'd always found it a relaxing place, but it was also a favored dating spot.

"It's been so long since I've seen trees." Ranma noted as she rested her arm against the trunk of one of them. "I'm not sure Tarak even has any left, after the orbitals were all lost."

Meia mentally sighed as an opening seemed to present itself, and was almost immediately squashed. She decided to soldier through. "I like to come here to relax."

"I'd think that you'd prefer to spend some time in the simulator." Ranma commented, not looking away from the tree she was studying.

"Sometimes. What about you?"

"On the orbital, we needed passes to visit the arboretum. It was a nice change of pace." Ranma looked almost wistful.

"You haven't been accusing me of murdering your men much recently." Meia noted.

Ranma paused, and Meia saw her fists tighten. "There was a time I would have slit your throat for that, and been more than happy to trade my life to kill over a hundred of you. You're monsters that will accept nothing less than unconditional surrender and enslavement of Tarak. You've destroyed our civilization, and yet you continue to pick at the bones." Ranma turned towards her. "Of course what you're really asking is why you didn't wake up with my hands wrapped around your throat or in a pool of your own blood."

Meia wasn't sure if Ranma had intended it as a threat, but her malice was clearly on display. Then it seemed to go out. "I guess I'm just cryo fragged, and you don't feel like one of them. Do you need to avoid hot water?"

Meia studying Ranma trying to figure out why she would ask such an odd question. "Why do you ask?"

"You'd know if it mattered." Came Ranma's cryptic response as she mellowed out and walked over to crouch near the stream. "Is it really normal for your people to feel this way towards others?"

"Well there's some who just pair up because they want kids, but this is how it's supposed to be."

"Based on your civilian transmissions we should be yelling at each other, while arguing over some bit of petty nonsense."

Meia paused unsure what to think about the knowledge that Ranma was familiar with Mejere television at this point. The things she was familiar with were odd, and rarely consistent. It wasn't inconsistent with her theory that Ranma had somehow been mindwiped, but she'd realized that whatever was going on was more complex than she'd first suspected. "Do you want to yell at me?"

"It's not worth the energy. I'm stuck here, and I'd rather spend time with you than the alternatives." Ranma responded. "We need to get back." She started walking towards the exit.

[-]

Bart picked away at a spot on the floor. Thankfully they hadn't confiscated the sample he had been carrying of Garsus' new product line, so he hadn't gone hungry. Still he'd been left here sitting in the dark, in a room full of boxes with nothing to occupy himself and not enough room to lie down. He blinked against the glare, as the room was suddenly flooded with light.

"You're coming with us." A voice demanded.

[-]

Hibiki looked over the Vanguard. He had appropriated a set of tools, which was sitting next to his leg. He had, had a lot of trouble piloting it last time he'd went out. He had decided he was going to take it apart and put it back together again to figure out how it worked. If he did that maybe he could make some sense out of it.

"Getting ready to do some maintenance?" Hibiki turned and saw the redheaded "Lieutenant Commander" walking towards him.

Hibiki quickly turned guarded. "Yes."

"It looks like they're not working you too hard. At least this thing means they're going to have a harder time rationalizing getting rid of you." She commented.

"Who are you?" Hibiki asked looking at her suspiciously.

She smiled slightly. "A friend. Want some help figuring out the controls?"

Hibiki continued to look at her suspiciously. She reminded him of the Red Shoulder, but this clearly wasn't him. In addition to the obvious difference of being a woman, she was significantly shorter to the point he couldn't see anyway for a disguise to have been involved. It wasn't that odd to see very similar looking people on Tarak due to the factory production. Maybe it was something like that, somehow? Was it even possible for the Women of Mejere to have done something like that, even if they'd managed to get a tissue sample somehow?

The "Lieutenant Commander" shook her head and seemed to be mildly amused. "Suit yourself. If you want any help, feel free to let me know." She walked over to where the two Dreads that had still been encased in crystal, had crews swarming over them. Hibiki watched her walk away.

[-]

Barnette looked over her Dread. Her favored wing modules had been the additional paired antifighter guns and light missiles package, with balanced systems enhancing top. Often sans the missiles, given she was confident in her ability to pull off gun kills. The package was nice because quad guns made it much easier to bracket and shoot down enemy fighters. Based on what had happened to Dita and Meia's Dread she hadn't been sure what to expect, but had hoped it would be something to compliment her skill as a sharpshooter.

She had been studying it for awhile, and still wasn't sure what to make of the new form her Dread had taken. The dark purple she had favored was still in evidence as were multiple light antifighter guns and missile launchers. The gun arrangement however had changed, although honestly she found herself not minding the implications of it. The equivalent of the two guns that were part of the basic modular Dread frame, had been pulled in much closer to the centerline under the cockpit which would make things much nicer for precision shots. The wing guns had doubled up into vertically stacked pairs, which would be really nice for bracketing shots. The light missile launchers appeared to be larger, and just overall her impression was that it was better in all the areas she cared about, as the Reg crew checked out and prepared her Dread for launch.

"You look like a kid in a candy store, Barnette." Jura observed.

While she loved Jura dearly, one thing that Jura didn't share was her love of guns and blowing stuff up. "I really want to try it out. What about yours?"

"I don't know. It seems a little more elegant." Jura responded disinterestedly. "I'm more interested in whether it can combine like Dita's fighter did with that Vanguard. I'm sure it'd be fabulous." Jura started doing that disturbing laugh that she sometimes did.

"Are you trying to convince the ground crews to put a surprise in your ship?" Barnette turned to see that Tarak woman was approaching them.

"Whatever do you mean?" Jura responded, before returning to her disturbing laughter.

The Tarak woman crossed her arms over her chest. "I get your entire race is composed of abominations that bleed once a month in penance for the crime of their existence against the universe, but you're even creeping them out with that."

"Aren't you an 'abomination' that bleeds once a month in penance for the crime of your existence?" Barnette asked.

The Tarak woman glared at her with naked venom. Barnette didn't see how Meia could put up with her. "You're really not one for being friendly are you?"

The Tarak woman looked like she was about to throttle her. "Why should I be friendly with murderers and pirates?"

Barnette had, had enough. "You want a fight? Why don't you throw a punch short stuff?"

"Sure." As the Tarak woman confidently slipped into a fighting stance, Barnette reflected that maybe challenging her to fisticuffs hadn't been the wisest idea when she spent most of her spare time training with replica guns.

[-]

Meia found a large crowd gathered around part of the hangar deck with cries of encouragement echoing across the deck. She had been working with part of the Engineering and Reg crews to figure out how to use this bay to house the modified Dreads given they would no longer fit in the normal Dread launch catapult. The scene was eerily familiar of some of the streets fights she'd gotten into with the butch gang she'd been running with before Magno had found her.

She made her way through to crowd to find Ranma fighting Paraila. The pair of redheads both looked like they'd taken a few blows, and all the cries she could hear were encouraging Paraila. Paraila's crazy streak got the better of her as she overcommited to what would have been a devestating attack if it had connected. Ranma however turned her body slightly, and Paraila dropped as Ranma's fist made solid contact with Paraila's jaw.

"Who's next?" Ranma bellowed, wiping a trail of blood from her lip.

Natsume entered the ring, and brought her fists up. "You're going down Red."

"Heard it before." Ranma shot back, slipping into her own stance.

Meia debated breaking this up. Within the more butch circles that she had drifted towards, this wasn't uncommon and it felt wrong to break it up. It was fisticuffs, and while the more femme aspects of Mejere society often expressed distaste for it, it had its purpose. Natsume played it safer, but never saw the devestating kick that took her down.

"Who's next?" Ranma demanded again.

"Me." Meia asserted, unzipping and removing the somewhat decorative flak jacket she normally wore over her pilot suit, and handing it off to Melno for safe keeping. She went ahead and removed the one decorative piece of jewelry that she allowed herself, and turned that over to Melno as well. She was fully confident that the girl would respect the importance of her possessions.

Ranma paused and her bounce seemed to miss a beat as Meia entered the ring. It had been awhile since she had fought like this, and honestly she was looking forward to it. She wasn't surprised when the crowd started chanting encouragements for her to put the Tarak woman in her place.

Ranma gave her a respectful nod, and launched into her attack. Meia very quickly appreciated that the girl was fast and knew what she was doing, as Ranma smoothly flowed from one attack to another in a seemingly random pattern. Instincts that had been drilled into her from all the fist fights she had gotten into kept her from going down, but she recognized that Ranma had her on the ropes. Seeing and opening Meia threw a punch, only to have Ranma sidestep, grab her arm, and pull her down into a pin.

Meia struggled for a few seconds against the pin, but it was solid. "I yield." She announced, and Ranma let her go.

As Meia got up she got a good look at Ranma, and decided to try something. Meia slowly and purposefully moved in and hugged Ranma. Meia felt Ranma stiffen in her arms, and then she just kind of wilted.

"What are you doing?" Ranma hissed in her ear.

"Sorry girls, she's mine." Meia announced to the group. There were a lot of looks of disappointment and a few of betrayal, but they cleared out.

"Well you and Paraila certainly fit the stereotype for your hair color." Meia noted, enjoying Ranma's warmth.

"What's that?"

"That you're impulsive, quick to fight, and have a temper." Meia responded, she could feel Ranma start to relax a little.

"I guess I can't argue with that." Ranma responded quietly.

"As Dread Leader I'm going to overlook this, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't make these impromptu fights a habit. Okay?"

There was a long pause. "No promises." Ranma finally answered.

Meia started to pull away, but she felt Ranma's hands slowly and hesitantly wrap around her back. Meia quietly held her, as she heard Ranma quietly asking why she felt this way.

[-]

Jura carefully treated Barnette's wounds. None of them were serious enough to need to go to medbay, and certainly not under the care of that awful man that the captain had allowed take it over. She could handle a few scrapes and bruises.

"Jura, I think that's enough bandages." Barnette objected.

"Nonsense." Jura responded, as she put a large adhesive gauze bandage over Barnette's jawline where a bruise was forming. Everyone knew that bandages made it better.

[-]

Author's Notes:

Before someone starts writing a nasty review, no I'm not taking a potshot at Betty Friedan with the Shimakaze having self serve kitchens and automated kitchens. Friedan being the one that's credited with starting 2nd wave feminism and the thread of thought that women shouldn't be constrained to housewives, which was captured well in the original Stepford Housewives movie. The point of that wasn't so much against women engaging in domestic activities, as being treated as an appliance instead of a person.

Or in common internet lingo this isn't advocating that a woman's place is in the kitchen.

In the Vandread source material when Dita first tries to give Hibiki Mejere style food, she picks it up off an assembly line setup. Now unlike Nadesico there's nothing about this scene or the series that implies there is an actual cooking staff, but there's also several important scenes where self serve kitchens are used. Now space on a spaceship, much like a submarine, is very limited. Based on Magno's ship having a garden it's established that Mejere does waste some space on things they consider culturally important as affirmed by Gascogne in her account to Hibiki of what happened to their living unit. So automated and self serve kitchens are being handled from that angle.


	6. Chapter 6

[-]

Buzam looked over the request the Captain had sent her to work with the crew to come up with a new name for the ship. She'd went ahead and setup and automated multilayer survey system, which would ask for suggestions with a dynamic poling system associated with a second round of electronic mail that'd be sent out to the crew. She primed it with her own suggestion, as old word referring to a state of peace when the flame of suffering had been snuffed out, Nirvana.

[-]

"I can't figure this out. How are you doing this to me? You can't be secreting something that'd get through both of our suits." Meia could tell Ranma was unnerved by her feelings. Meia had been trying to figure out some way to explain it to her.

"Let me show you something." Meia said while trying to be consoling. She pulled back a little and unzipped her pilot suit enough to expose her sports bra, tying the sleeves of her pilot suit above her hips so it wouldn't slip lower. Reaching over she gently grabbed Ranma's hand and Meia carefully placed it under her left breast.

"I know it's not the most reliable way, but can you feel it?" Ranma nodded in response, and Meia mirrored the gesture placing her hand on Ranma's chest and found she was able to feel the other woman's heart racing. "They're calling out to each other." Meia told Ranma while looking her straight into her eyes.

Ranma was clearly startled, and if anything only seemed to be more unnerved by her declaration. "That'd mean that... I really am tainted." Ranma trailed off and pulled her arm back examining it.

"It's okay." Meia tried to soothe, but Ranma just went quiet and turned in on herself. Meia felt Ranma's heartbeat slow and quiet beyond the ability of her hand to feel it. Why was this happening? Why was it that whenever it seemed like they were establishing a connection, that Ranma would just shut her out? Their feelings seemed to be mutual, so why did this keep happening? Ranma seemed like she was inviting her interest, but then would shut down once she had it.

[-]

Ranma looked up at his Vanguard. The lines weren't quite like they had been during the glory days of the Battalion, but it was close and setup in his favored configuration. The left forearm mounted a beam gun, and the minigun was once more mounted on the left hip. Both with their own secondary targeting optics, which would key into the trio of optical sensors mounted in the head. He would need to check whether the rifle and box launcher were now up to spec, given they were clearly modified by the Paksis.

It was a relatively heavy loadout which cut down on potential acceleration, but gave more options. While the minigun wasn't powerful enough to be particularly useful against Dreads, it was worth its weight when doing a forced boarding and provided a last ditch hard kill option to neutralize enemy missiles. Between the two he'd always considered it worth its weight. The forearm mounted beam gun also didn't add much weight. The main advantage over a beam rifle was that it drew power off the reactor without being fiddly, and being able to do most things you'd use a beam rifle for. It also was a nice back up ranged weapon that was useful against Dreads.

The most obvious change to the chassis was that the space pack appeared to have been, for lack of a better term, absorbed into the body. There was a lot more thrusters, and there was an area on the back which stored more propellant than the base Vanguard did. He'd checked, and there were still mounting points for a space pack or one of the ground based expansion options that used those mounting points.

Hopping up he quickly used the cockpit release, causing the hatch to slide open to the side. Slipping in he quickly strapped in, and powered his machine up. The controls had been modified but it felt very familiar as he moved it out of the hangar, and onto the hull outside. Switching on the secondary movement system he glided along the hull of the Ikazuchi. If anything his vanguard felt more responsive than it'd ever been. Everything appeared to be working properly. He paused for a moment to just look around.

Meia... Ranma rested his head against the main monitor, feeling his forehead push against the padding of his helmet. There was a pain in his chest and he was struck with a desire to be near her, as thoughts of her came bubbling up unbidden. Like Meia had said, it felt like his heart was trying to call out to hers. He reached up, and placed his hand just below the enlarged female breasts that were currently on his chest.

After the incident High Command had deemed him tainted, and ordered that his contact with the larger Tarak populace be limited to prevent spreading the taint. After that was when he'd started spending extended time in cryo, only being pulled out to do something before being put back under while constantly being monitored by Intelligence for signs of deeper corruption. Even that was closed to him now. There was no way he could hide this corruption from them.

Even if he was inclined to defect to Mejere, despite them being a bunch of murderous savages that could never be satisfied with their plunder, he doubted they would just let him be. The best result he could conceive of was them parading him around to rub Tarak's nose in it, before quietly making him conveniently disappear once the narrative had run its course. From there it became more of a question of how they were going to kill him, and how drawn out it'd be.

He didn't like the option where he just gave into this corruption to begin with. It would be nice if there was some way to just stop these feelings so he could just go back to focusing on doing what needed to be done to survive. Tarak medical technology naturally wouldn't cover such a thing, and if this was normal for the Women of Mejere he doubted that they would have developed such a thing. The Shimakaze's automated medical systems were still offline, so it wasn't like he currently had access to it. He had already verified that changing back didn't clear this particular corruption. The seat of his soul had been completely corrupted by this weird siren call.

He glanced over at the small inlay of the great Happi, who was said to have personally terrorized thousands of women and left their entire species in terror of his existence. Happi was the founder of Anything Goes, the principles behind the military arts of Tarak. Legend said that his namesake and gene source had been the greatest of his original disciples. He was a disgrace to both.

[-]

Happosai glanced up thoughtfully for a moment, while continuing to quickly dodge through the urban landscape with his bag of liberated female underthings which he'd now be able to protect from theft by unscrupulous people. It felt like someone had invoked his name in respect. That didn't happen that often, and especially not an individual, like this felt like. Maybe he had a new disciple on his hands.

"Kill it with fire!" came a cry from the crowd pursuing him.

Oh boy. It looked like they were going to make a fight of it.

[-]

Hibiki finished taking notes based on what was immediately apparent by opening the maintenance hatches. Parfet had been willing to issue him a datapad, which had made things a lot easier. The datapad was able to take pictures, and allowed him to annotate them and set them in larger bodies of notes. He opened the cockpit, and slipped into his Partner's chair, strapping in. He adjusted the starter to turn on the monitors and electronics. There was no need to start up the reactor to run diagnostics, reserve power would more than suffice.

It took him several minutes of navigating the interface before he found what he wanted, but there they were detailed schematics of the various systems. He was pleasantly surprised to find that he could isolate specific electrical systems, and it would display them either in isolation or as part of the unit. He had to admit this was better than taking it apart, at least for right now. He was appreciating that Parfet had brought up that he should check whether the diagnostic systems were this sophisticated when he had contacted her about acquiring a digital camera to help insure that he would be able to put his Partner back together after he took it apart.

He smiled. None of the women seemed to actually be interested in eating his liver, and he felt like he actually was someone. Sure they'd barely acknowledged his wiping out half of the attacking force by himself. Plus he was staying in the brig, but he didn't feel like he was just another cog in the machine.

"Mr. Alien!" Came an all too familiar voice, as a certain someone started pounding on the hatch he'd been mindful enough to close. Maybe if he ignored her, she'd think he wasn't here and go away?

[-]

Barnette looked over her tablet and noticed there was a new priority message from the Commander.

"What are you looking at Barnette?" Jura asked, looking over her shoulder.

"It's a message from the Commander. She's looking for suggestions for a new name for the ship."

"How about the Luxury Night?" Jura suggested.

[-]

"Captain we have a large contact on an inbound vector, heavy cruiser size class." Belvedere observed from her station.

"Where's Bart?!"

"Here." The aforementioned said meekly as the door to the bridge slid open.

"You're a helmsman, right? So get us out of here!"

"Yes, Ma'am." Bart scrambled around looking at the different stations, and then approached the dais that Parfet's crew had decided was probably some kind of holographic observation tank. The dais started to glow as Bart approached, and sucked him in leaving no trace of his existence.

Magno was just starting to wonder if she had somehow led the boy to his doom when the ship started moving, and a communications window opened of Bart in some kind of holographic observation tank. Well figure that.

[-]

"Report to battle stations, this is not a drill."

Hibiki looked up as he continued to run away from the alien girl, and started adjusting his path to circle back around to his Vanguard.

[-]

"Captain, our sensors have resolved the contact. It's bigger than us! Putting it on screen." Belvedere rattled off.

The main holographic monitor came up showing a large ship that bore a strong resemblance to an elongated brick. Sharp angles defined its lines, and it was immediately apparent it was a pure bred warship rather than a carrier. Given Parfet's crews hadn't been able to locate anyway to control ship based weapons, if there were any at this point. The only weapon they really had was the Dreads, and this wasn't looking good.

"BC, get Meia on the line. We need to figure out a strategy."

[-]

"The problem is going to be doing it with minimal casualties. I can guarantee that unlike the Ikazuchi, the weapons onboard that thing are not being actuated by crews of men manually turning the turrets." Ranma noted. "I suggest that we see if we can lose them, and analyze the sensor data before committing to an attack."

Meia glanced at her companion. "I agree. Are there any nebulas, planetary rings, or asteroid fields nearby we can dive into nearby?"

"Asteroid fields?" Bart ask fearfully.

"We've detected a dense nebula in range." Amarone noted from her station.

"Run a chemical analysis, make sure it's not going to light up if they start firing weapons." BC ordered.

"It checks out." Amarone responded.

"Well Bart, take us in." Magno ordered.

[-]

Unlike in a habitat designed for human occupation, in space there isn't an abundance of background oxygen. While the lack of oxygen doesn't preclude the possibility of exothermic chemical reactions being initiated by high levels of heat crossing the barrier energy threshold and triggering a chain reaction, in a nebula like this that didn't have appreciable amounts of gaseous oxygen there were different chemical reactions. This particular nebula had a diverse composition of chemicals, but the associated possible reactions were predominantly endothermic, and thus would if anything help to blunt any high energy weapons.

This was a very useful property to have as the incoming warship began firing fusion warheads.

[-]

"High energy discharge consistent with fusion warheads detected."

"Are they trying to flush us out? They can't believe they're going to hit us by shooting those things blindly in here." Magno groused. The quick analysis had pointed to this nebula being at least several light seconds across.

"Bart, take evasive maneuvers now." Buzam ordered.

An energy beam sliced through the area they'd been moments before. "It looks like they're trying to pinpoint us using the echo, but there's enough of a lag they'll have to get lucky to actually manage to hit us in here. Take us deeper into the nebula Bart, and continue to make random course changes."

[-]

Ranma and Maia hunched over the holoprojector that had been setup in the Ikazuchi's hangar. Given their equipment had to be stored here, while the normal Dreads were stored several decks below command of the Dread teams wasn't as simple as it used to be. Meia was networking with Gascogne in Reg as a workable compromise for the moment although once they were out of this she was going to talk with Parfet's crew about finding a better solution.

Ranma was working the controls, and studying the ship when she stopped the rotation and zoomed in on a spot midway down the side of the enemy ship's hull. "Look, this is a resupply hatch for heavy ordinance."

"It's protected by a lot of guns." Meia cautioned, zooming back out where the numerous anti-fighter turrets they'd identified and highlighted in red could be easily seen.

"That's a problem for Dreads. There's a lot of blindspots near the hull and areas where they'd be shooting their own ship to try to nail something on the hull." Ranma adjusted the display, which added smokey black zones the illustrated the blindspots and showed a safe area near the supply hatch.

"You're not going to be able to get Vanguards near that thing without getting blown out of the sky. They're too slow; and what happens if they decide it's worth shooting their own ship to try to stop the attack?" Meia adjusted the display, and the smoky areas shrunk significantly with the safe zone around the hatch effectively disappearing.

"You're right. A Tsukumo-type Vanguard isn't suited to this mission, and would need some means to help it get over there. Thankfully there's a Vanguard on board that's not based off the Tsukumo pattern and has a tracked secondary movement system that's designed to be able to do this kind of thing. Gascogne, do you think you could wire that spare Dread for remote piloting?"

Gascogne shrugged. "Maybe, what do you want it to be remotely pilot it from?"

"My Scope Dog."

Meia grabbed Ranma's sleeve. The way Ranma had been acting Meia was afraid that Ranma might be planning a one way trip. "I'll fly you. My Dread is more powerful and agile than anything a normal Dread can configured to do. Gascogne, do you think your teams could put together some kind of sling?"

"Why don't you two see if your fighters combine like Dita and Hibiki's did before I put my crews on something like that?" Gascogne suggested. "You seem like you're rather compatible to combine." She added with a chuckle.

Meia glanced at Gascogne's communication window in annoyance, while Ranma looked at her in puzzlement. "Well I guess we should try it." Ranma said quietly, and started walking across the deck to where her Scope Dog was crouched. Meia decided to go ahead and retrieve her Dread.

As she climbed into her Dread and powered it up, a communications window from Ranma showed up. "Does Gascogne know something about the combining phenomena? How would she know if we were compatible for it?"

Meia kept her composure, she had understood Gascogne's innuendo, but really didn't feel like talking about _that _with Ranma right now. Especially not with how just sharing a hug had went. She worked the controls to release the docking clamps, and gently move her Dread to hovering above the deck. "I think she was just speculating because we seem to get along well together."

Ranma seemed to consider the idea. "Given Paksis Pragma is a psychoreactive material, I guess that makes sense. I wonder if that really does have an influence?"

Oh the thoughts she was having. "Why don't you come to me?" Her Dread was now larger than a normal Dread, which was already significantly larger than a Vanguard. There would be less trouble this way than her trying to navigate her Dread to him. She looked over to see Ranma's green Vanguard with its distinctive red should skating towards her at relatively high speed.

Meia blinked against a flash of bright light, as she felt something warm pressing against her back. "Did it work?" She heard Ranma ask from behind her.

"I think so." Meia leaned back slightly, and felt Ranma twist as she turned towards her.

"This is going to be awkward if the acceleration compensator aren't compensating for everything." Ranma noted.

Meia looked around. On one hand she agreed with Ranma that she didn't look forward to the possible consequences if the acceleration compensator didn't handle everything. On the other this was a rather nice, spacious elongated cockpit which gave her a good view of the surroundings. "It'll be fine, just make sure to keep your back pressed against mine." Meia responded trying to sound reassuring.

"Heh. I'd worry more about yourself. Your flak jacket gives me a nice padded headrest." Ranma shot back.

Meia smiled glad that Ranma had her energy back. "I can take care of myself. Just make sure you make it back so I can pick you up once you've delivered the package."

Meia felt a slight twitch in Ranma's back. Meia wanted to hold her, but even as the urge rose recognized that it might not be the best choice right now. "You weren't planning on coming back."

"No, I'd rather die with my integrity intact."

Meia quickly setup an autopilot routine to maintain position. "I can't let you do that."

She turned and started pulling Ranma towards her. Ranma pushed her arms away, and looked at her with fire in her eyes. "What's it to you?! I felt like I could understand you, and it twisted into this and turned me into a deviant. I..."

Ranma's defenses weakened, and Meia successfully grabbed her, and pulled her close. "Ranma." Meia said slowly holding the other woman. "I'll understand if you don't want to be with me, but come back. You can't get your revenge on us if you're dead right?"

She could see Ranma was conflicted. After a few moments she calmed down. "Don't die before I get to you." She said finally, before quietly turning around and pressing a button on her control panel.

Meia found herself alone back in her Dread.

[-]

"There's no point deploying anyone else. That cruiser doesn't have launch bays or accompanying fighters." Ranma commented, in the teleconference they'd setup with her and Gascogne.

"Deploying screening fighters will increase our chances of survival." Meia pointed out.

"And decrease theirs to no purpose. We're in a nebula. That ship is effectively flying blind, just like us. Screening fighter would be useful in normal space. In here it just increases the chances of casualties due to getting lost or enemy fire." Ranma shot back.

Magno rubbed her chin, it looked like the two of them were fighting. Magno wasn't sure whether this was a positive sign or not. Couples having fights was normal, and from what she'd been hearing they were a couple. This however was a very delicate operation they were outlining, and she didn't want to lose either of their talents. Now wasn't a good time for them to be fighting, even if it was natural for them to be fighting under the circumstances.

"And how are you two intending to locate our pursuer?" Magno asked.

"Our sensors can pick up the backscatter echo off their bomb just like they're probably doing to us. It's not very precise given all the noise those fusion heads are creating in the process and the conditions in here, but it should be enough to allow us to setup an intercept." Ranma responded.

"What about getting back? Without those things going off we're both blind in this soup." Magno asked.

"We'll use inertial guidance to trace our way back, and send out a ping if we can't find you." Meia responded quickly enough that Magno knew the question had been anticipated. Navigating in these kinds of nebulas was always a risky proposition, as one was left flying blind. It was very easy to become lost, and that was part of why she was willing to accept this idea that they'd be flying this mission by themselves with all of the actual travel in a combined craft. Still the anxiety of potentially losing both of them ate at her, especially when one accounted for issues with drift over the distances they'd be covering..

Magno weighed things over in her head. On one hand that cruiser was out there. While the chances of it actually successfully sinking them were acceptable remote as long as Bart kept up with evasive maneuvers, the reality was that it was tracking them. They needed to either neutralize it, or throw it off their tail before they left this nebula. The sooner that was taken care of the better. The longer they waited the more likely it was that friends of that cruiser were going to show up, and they'd not be able to make a clean jump and lose their pursuers.

After some consideration Magno decided that she couldn't see a better option. This was the only way they could insure they could throw their tail in a reasonably timely manner, and the risks were acceptable when handled by two of her most capable people. She was just about to clear the operation when Gascogne spoke up.

"I think we should see if we can salvage anything off the wreck once they finish with their op." Gascogne suggested.

"I don't think that's worth the risks in here. The sooner we can leave this area the better." Magno responded turning her down. By her reckoning with four fusion heads detonating near the core of the ship, it was going to be turned into a gutted radioactive wreck if it wasn't simply turned into a debris field. If something did manage to survive that she didn't see a pay-off worth sacrificing her crew to conduct a boarding operation. Ideally once they left this area of space they should never see these robotic enemies again.

"I'm clearing this operation. Gascogne issue them the fusion heads."

[-]

Meia looked out over the crowd. "I need you all to stay here, and guard the ship."

"Why are you going out there with that Tarak woman?" Paraila asked, with naked derision that was clearly aimed at the "Tarak woman." There was muttered agreement across her flight crew. Ranma literally picking a fight with them clearly hadn't endeared her, even if they had been so inclined in the first place.

"Because it significantly increases **my**, and by extension **your **chances of survival." Ranma responded bluntly, crossing her arms over her chest. There was grumbling among the crew, but no voice really rose above the mutterings of discontent.

Hibiki raised his hand from where he was sitting perched on a large munitions crate. "Why aren't we flying escort?" Meia, picked up on several dismissive remarks from her flight crew.

"Sensors are mostly blind in this stuff, and those that aren't have issues with false signals and interference. Simply put it's easy to get lost, and this area of space isn't safe enough for us to accept those risks. It's just not worth it." Ranma responded.

Hibiki looked like he was going to challenge that for a moment, and then seemed to decide he had something better to do as he pulled out a tablet.

[-]

"You okay? You don't have a headrest." Ranma asked after they'd been underway for awhile. The view outside the cockpit was a sea of colors, and impenetrable chaos that quickly lost its visual appeal and seemed to close in. She didn't like being forced to rely on instruments with everything closed in like this. She was very appreciative of the autopilot systems taking over most of the navigation.

Glad to have a distraction, Meia turned so she was sitting sideways on the bench seat. Looking over Ranma's shoulder, she could see that Ranma was keeping a close eye on the sensor readouts and regulating the autopilot. "You're being nice to me again." She noted.

Ranma glanced at her, and shook her head before focusing once more on the display. "It's called common decency." Ranma responded simply. "That flak jacket you're wearing gives me a nice padded headrest, you've got nothing."

"Well if you're offering." Meia rested her head on Ranma's shoulder. Ranma looked at her in surprise, and made a show of returning her attention to the monitors, but Meia could feel the subtle changes in her posture. Meia decided not to push further, Ranma seemed comfortable with this.

[-]

Ranma hit the release as they glided close to where the projections from the returns pointed to the heavy cruiser being, and traveling on a vector that should intercept it. These kinds of nebulas created significant interference with shield grids, and there was simply a lot more stuff it had to constantly deal with. That made breaching the shielding easier as he directed shields downwards, and shifted them into breach mode. He didn't understand all the details of its operation, but it helped allow a physical object to pierce instead of being deflected away by shielding systems.

He waited, tapping his foot and glancing at the clock he'd put on one of the side monitors to keep track of the time. There were no points of reference in this stuff just a cloud of various colors occasionally lit up be electric discharges. The shielding systems were designed to provide some defense against radiation, and the armor layers included materials designed to help with the gamma rays and neutrons that were less interactive and harder to deal with. It wasn't designed to be able to deal with the radiation flux of one of those warheads at close range, but at the normal ranges in space protecting against those fusion heads this thing was setting off was almost trivial. The return off the latest one confirmed that the heavy cruiser would be right below him shortly, and the calculations verified that a viable intercept will occur shortly with an acceptable velocity differential.

After a few tense moments his Scope Dog made contact, and he felt a slight clang through the frame as the magnetic systems in the feet adhered him to hull, providing him enough traction to use the secondary movement system but not so much as to provide excessive friction. At this distance the thermal camera could make out part of the hull in grainy detail. It took him a couple of minutes to pick out landmarks and orient himself, while he was grateful that the cruiser hadn't yet picked up on his presence. The massive thermal plume of the engines was enough to cut through the interference, and quickly established which direction was aft. The actual landmarks helped to establish were he actually was on the hull.

He was around a hundred meters off from where he needed to be, but he was pretty sure what direction he needed to go. Activating the secondary movement system and started gliding along the hull, leaving the head unit in scan mode. His Scope Dog brought to his attention that the turrets were starting to move. He had probably tripped some sensor and had a rapidly closing window before they decided that he wasn't a false signal, and was worth shooting at. Opening up the throttle, he dodged around a turret, the scanning system already having been keyed to to identify his objective.

An energized bolt lit off nearby, as he started increasing his zigzagging. Thankfully he got a confirmed reading as the fire started to intensify. Shifting to a slide he hugged the hull, and once he was over the hatch, let loose with beam gun bursts from his left forearm to weaken the material of the door. A cartridge punch with his right breached the door, and thankfully he quickly was able to force it open.

He walked the Vanguard in as the nebula stuff rushed in, and his Vanguard immediately detected a barrage of beam fire. Thankfully none of it was high power enough to have any chance of piercing his shields. Thermals took a moment to resolve, but identified the sources as small tank things. Some quality time with the minigun quieted them down.

He traveled a short while breaching doors as needed, and hosing the minitanks as they showed up until he reached what was clearly a fusion head magazine. He made sure to double check he was oriented to pursue his escape route, and should have enough time, before he released the package. It was a hardened armor container with four small fusion heads that were now all independently fuzed. By their calculations the odds were very good at least one of them would go boom unmolested, and going off in here this thing was going to be a debris cloud.

He made his way out as fast as he could, and releasing the magnetics shifted to thrusters as he left the hull. This was the really dangerous part. If it wasn't bad enough that he was traveling along a reasonably predictable path with enough beam guns trained on him to rain down a veritable storm of fire, he needed to send out an electronic ping that would identify exactly where he was so Meia could snatch him before the ship below him detonated. The odds were good that he would be lost with the heavy cruiser at this point, the very thing that had made insertion so easy making extraction almost impossible.

He was just about to resign himself as his shields started failing to the bolts he hadn't been able to dodge when there was a flash of light, and his back once more pressed against Meia's. He felt slightly fatigued for some reason, and let Meia do her thing as they tore out of there.

[-]

"Heavy cruiser down." Buzam noted. The explosion was much larger than the previous ones, and they'd picked up a debris cloud passing by as part of it deflected off their shields.

Magno nodded. "Begin transmitting."

"But Captain..." Buzam started to object. Magno had a pretty good idea what she was going to say, but respected Buzam enough to let her continue. "We're already using inertial navigation to try to return from the point where we launched them, and they should already be on their way back using inertial navigation. There's no need."

"I disagree. Inertial guidance can't accommodate for the amount of drift we've been experiencing from all these explosions going off. If we don't start pinging them, we could end up just passing by each other. It's worth the risks, we need to make sure we get them back."

Buzam thought about it a second, and relayed her order without further question.

[-]

Meia gratefully released the controls and ripped off her helmet as she passed through the containment field, the walls no longer felt like they were closing in. She felt Ranma turn behind her, Meia glanced in her direction to find Ranma studying her.

"Was there a problem with your environmental control systems?" Ranma asked, in a way that seemed to suggest something else although she didn't catch the meaning.

"No." She responded, remaining confidently aloof as she waited to see where Ranma was going with this.

Ranma chuckled. "Then why are you sweating?" Her voice carried a challenging tone to her question that seemed to imply she shouldn't be.

Meia reached over and unsealed Ranma's helmet, and lifted it off to find that Ranma didn't look as sweaty as she felt. Ranma gave her a confident and challenging look. Meia wanted to draw nearer, but held herself back.

"Well..." Ranma prompted. Meia still wasn't sure what Ranma was even getting at. This weird challenging behavior was unfamiliar to her, but after some thought she started drawing parallels with the butch gang she'd run with. Wait...

"Are you trying to accuse me of being weak?" Meia asked in surprise.

Ranma blinked in surprise to her surprise. "I'm just messing with you." She replied, brushing it off. "We still good?"

Meia smiled, trying to figure out the rhythm of this game. "Sure, shorty."

Ranma's expression tweaked slightly, but she grinned back. Meia found she didn't mind this game that much, it was a nice change of pace at least. This felt a lot more straightforward than what she normally had to deal with.

[-]

"Most of our systems seem to be back online." Parfet noted. "We'll need to spend some time working out the astrometrics before we can make any serious jumps, but we should be able to plot some short jumps into open space to get us out of this area."

Magno nodded. "Let's get out of here."

[-]

Bart looked over the information presented to him in the holo-tank. The only thing that was allowing him to stay sane was that he was managing managed systems. He was surrounded by a chaos of colors that had been obscured his vision of anything else. At least they weren't being shot at anymore.

A communications window opened and the Captain's face appeared. "Bart, take us out and prepare to make some random jumps into open space."

"Aye, aye Captain." Bart sighed as he glanced at the timer and confirmed that yes, he had just spent several hours in this thing with no break and not so much as a single food pellet, like his body was telling him.

[-]

Meia spent some extra money to buy a bottle of champagne for the evening, to celebrate their victory in addition to some nice ingredients to make dinner with. Ranma seemed happy as she helped with preparing the vegetables like last night. Ranma had changed into some fatigues that looked too large for her, and hid her figure. Meia expected that helped to explain why Ranma had been able to operate in the Tarak military, but she made a mental note to see about getting some clothes that fit better. She couldn't see how they could be comfortable when they looked like they were about ready to fall off her.

They divvied things up with a bit of good natured ribbing about not burning things. Meia didn't have any real concerns that things wouldn't come out fine, but it was fun and Ranma started it. They pulled together their plates, and Meia let Ranma uncork the bottle and pour the goblets, lest she have any concerns about it being tampered with.

"I've not seen something that's this frothy before. What's with the bubbles?" Ranma asked, holding one of the goblets aloft as she studied the champagne through the glass.

"They don't have champagne on Tarak?" Meia asked, starting feel a little guilty. She had gotten the bottle with the expectation that they would be getting drunk together, but hadn't intended that trick with carbonation to be a surprise.

Ranma shook her head, and took a sip seeming to be trying to get a taste for it. She smiled at Meia. "I'm not sure I like that weird sensation on my tongue, but that's nice." Meia decided it was best to just let the other effect of the carbonation slide. Ranma had already decided she liked it, and fussing about it not would come off all wrong. Especially as she had been the one to choose the champagne.

"I'm glad you like it." Meia noted, taking a sip herself and enjoying the taste as she felt herself start to relax as the alcohol made its way into her system. Meia sat down next to Ranma resisting the urge to make a move. She started eating, only to notice Ranma pouring herself another glass of champagne.

"What does it matter anyway?" Ranma asked herself before downing the entire goblet.

Meia watched as Ranma grabbed her hand, and carefully placed it over Ranma's heart. Meia could feel Ranma's heart thumping away. She looked in Ranma's eyes and saw the clear need and desire there, but also a lot of confusion. Meia could see that the feelings Ranma was feeling were unnerving her, but that the alcohol was also having its effect.

"Why does your heart keep calling me?" Ranma got out. Meia was starting to regret using that turn of phrase. Ranma was clearly taking it literally. At this point though it seemed better to just stay the course, especially as this was getting her own heart racing.

Meia gently grasped Ranma's free hand, and placed it over her heart. "They're calling each other." She could see from Ranma's body language that, that wasn't good enough. Meia had tried to make it clear that in general and on a personal level between them, that the feelings she was experiencing were normal. She had tried to make it clear their feelings were mutual hoping that would encourage Ranma to take solace in their budding relationship. That however had, and clearly now was failing to salve things.

Meia let Ranma's hand go, and reached up to brush Ranma's cheek. Ranma flinched away from her touch, and if anything seemed more unnerved. Meia decided it'd be better to back off for the moment. "Why don't you get some food in you?" She suggested. It'd help sober her up a little.

Ranma looked at her for a second, and turned to her food. Meia caught Ranma looking at her as she went back to eating, and smiled at her. Ranma locked eyes with her, and there was a challenging edge to her look. Meia met her gaze, and continued to smile as she stared deep into Ranma's eyes. Meia noticed Ranma's expression start to change as they continued to look into each others eyes, but Ranma didn't look away whether due to not wanting to back down or being drawn in.

Meia recognized she was a little tipsy as the thought of stealing a kiss fluttered into her mind. She had already wrapped her arm around Ranma's neck and was starting to pull her into a kiss when the thought occurred to her that maybe that wasn't a good idea. She decided to shelve that.

Meia realized that she hadn't actually had that much experience kissing, as her lips hesitantly met Ranma's. To the extent Sayaka had been interested in kissing, she'd always wanted to be in control and dominant. Now she was the one trying to initiate a kiss, and the nature of it just seemed different. For one thing it was just a kiss by itself, instead of kissing while Sayaka's hand was exploring somewhere else. It was actually kind of nice.

After what seemed like a long time Meia broke the kiss, giggling a little bit from the effects of the alcohol and doing such a thing. Ranma looked troubled as she brought her hand up and hesitantly touched her lips.

"Did you like that?" Meia asked.

"I guess." Ranma responded, seemingly trying to brush it off. "So that's what you meant by kiss?" She added quietly, probably to herself.

Meia recognized the implication of Ranma's attraction to her, and that she'd just taken Ranma's first kiss. It made her feel all warm and giddy inside, although it was quickly tempered by the complexities of Ranma's response. Ranma had seemed to enjoy it, but it almost seemed like she was disturbed by doing so.

Ranma picked up her tray, and walked out.

[-]

Author's Notes:

Practical interplanetary travel calls for the ability to navigate and operate a vehicle moving at km/s velocities at the very least, which combined with shielding against cosmic radiation and scaling laws means that it's not actually that hard to effectively dodge nukes in open space that don't have an utterly ridiculous yield. On the other hand, it wouldn't really require that much energy to shatter an armored starship.

The way I'm handling this anything high enough yield to conceivably flatten a city requires the Captain's approval to be issued. The Kamikaze package had a requirement of a high ranking officer's authorization ala Gascogne, so there's precedence for it in series, in addition to just being responsible policy.

Dense nebulas that screw with ships have been a thing in science fiction since at least the Wrath of Khan, and were popularized in terms of sensor issues and flying blind by things like Wing Commander 3, Freespace 2, and Tachyon: The Fringe. In reality nebulas are likely to be less dense then the air you're currently breathing, but it's a well established Sci-Fi trope and is fun to play with.

Given what Happosai has survived through, ironically when considering whether to have him still alive I came to the conclusion I'd actually have to come up with some reason he wouldn't be. The guy at the time of his introduction into the Ranma ½ source material was unspecified centuries old, and had just survived spending around two decades buried alive in a cave. At that point what's a few or even several more centuries?


End file.
